Vocal About Regulations

It's prudent for asset managers to try to get retail dollars because more money is shifting to individuals with the move to defined contribution plans, where savers handle their own money, from defined benefit plans, said Jeffrey Hopson, a research analyst at Stifel, Nicolaus & Co. in St. Louis. There was $4.5 trillion in defined contribution plans as of Dec. 31, according to the Investment Company Institute.

"We've never had a campaign this retail-oriented and are now investing more in that brand," said Fink.

BlackRock has also become more vocal about regulatory policies and taken positions that contrast with the views of peers in the industry in its quest to establish itself as a leader. The firm released a report last month outlining how regulators could make a floating net-asset value, or NAV, acceptable to money-market investors and managers.

BlackRock, which had previously opposed floating the NAV, said doing so wouldn't cripple the product, putting it at odds with firms including Pittsburgh-based Federated Investors Inc. and Boston-based Fidelity.

Leadership Position

"Some of this is getting in front of issues that have been long-term issues that no one has spent the time addressing," Kapito said in an interview on March 13. "So why don't we take a leadership position, go out and identify some of these issues, try to come up with solutions to these issues and get the industry to move in that direction?"

BlackRock oversaw $145 billion in U.S. money-market mutual funds as of Feb. 29, making it the seventh-largest manager, according to data compiled by research firm Crane Data LLC of Westborough, Massachusetts. Last year, money-market funds accounted for about 4 percent of revenue, filings show.

"I think of this as very welcome and appropriate from a firm like BlackRock," Paul Schott Stevens, president of the Investment Company Institute, the Washington-based trade group that has opposed any additional changes to money-market funds, said in an interview. "I view it as a leadership exercise."

Pushing For Transparency

BlackRock, the world's largest ETF provider, in October called for better transparency and disclosure of ETFs that use derivatives. Almost all of BlackRock's ETFs are backed by stocks, bonds or commodities they seek to track.