BlackRock put up records like a financial Usain Bolt on Wednesday

The asset manager announced 2024 full-year revenues rose 14%, topping $20 billion for the first time. Net inflows, the amount of client cash coming in, hit an all-time high of $641 billion. Assets reached a record $11.6 trillion in the fourth quarter, from $10.01 trillion a year earlier. 

“This is just the beginning,” CEO Larry Fink, 72, said in a statement. But who runs this firm beyond its “beginning” became murkier in one very notable way, creating another Wall Street succession drama.

Shuffling and Succession

The present, meanwhile, has never looked this good. The record inflow tally included $390 billion to BlackRock’s exchange-traded fund business last year, $226 billion to its equity funds, and $164 billion to its fixed-income investment strategies. The firm also built up more than $50 billion in assets at iShares Bitcoin Trust in less than a year.

The windfall justifies the gain in BlackRock’s shares, which rose 26% last year to beat the S&P 500 by three points. And things are still looking up. The second Trump administration is expected to lower corporate taxes and cut red tape, opening the door to even more buoyant conditions. The question hanging over the company now is who will be the next captain of the ship when Fink decides to hang up his boots:

• Once thought to be a leading candidate to follow Fink as CEO, senior executive Mark Wiedman announced Wednesday that he will leave BlackRock later this year, citing a desire to return to his “entrepreneurial roots.”
• While Fink said a group of executives will take on new and expanded roles, there is no clear frontrunner to succeed the septuagenarian, who has personally said people should work beyond the 65-year retirement age and has no immediate plans to take up pickleball full-time.

In fact, Fink’s still busy growing BlackRock: Its banner year included firming up its place in white hot private markets by purchasing infrastructure investment fund Global Infrastructure Partners and agreeing to buy private credit firm HPS. “For many companies, periods of M&A contribute to a pause in client engagement,” Fink wrote. “At BlackRock, clients are instead embracing and rewarding our strategy.”

End of a Green Deal: Blackstone’s influence was on display when Net-Zero Asset Manager, an asset management industry initiative to support climate efforts, said it was suspending operations earlier this week, just days after BlackRock withdrew. NZAM’s website said it had more than 325 signatories overseeing $57.5 trillion in assets before it shut down.

Even after Saudi Arabia runs out of oil, it’ll be powering your car.

The kingdom’s vice minister of mining affairs, Khalid al-Mudaifer, announced on Wednesday that the country is kicking off a new mineral investment project worth $100 billion. The focus will be on mining earth metals including lithium, zinc, copper, nickel, and gold, all crucial elements for battery-making, and therefore for the electric vehicle market.

From Black Gold to Real Gold

Saudi Arabia’s economy and its enormously influential sovereign wealth fund run on oil. But the Gulf nation is in the middle of re-tooling its economic future, and part of that involves making more domestic investments rather than hunting for buzzy Silicon Valley companies to back, which has been its modus operandi in the past. 

Saudi Arabia is hunting for industries that can keep the money coming in once oil prices stop climbing, which according to the International Energy Agency could be very soon: 

• The IEA put out an oil demand forecast on Wednesday, and while it said potential sanctions on Russia and Iran could tighten the oil market in the short term, it also slightly lowered its demand forecast for 2025. 
• The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries released its own rather less climactic forecast on Wednesday, predicting demand will continue to rise through next year, but that wouldn’t be the first time OPEC and the IEA have given very different predictions about where oil is headed.

Whether peak oil is just around the corner or way over the horizon, Saudi Arabia is preparing for a post-oil economy while it’s got plenty of cash to splash. Part of Wednesday’s mining announcement features a partnership between Aramco, the state oil company, and its state mining company to hunt for metals important to the energy transition.

Metal Sans Mines: On Wednesday, GM announced a partnership with Norwegian company Vianode, a synthetic graphite manufacturer. The supply deal will run from 2027, when Vianode plans to get a factory up and running in North America, until 2033 and cost unspecified “multi-billions.” Vianode’s USP is that it can provide a source of graphite outside of China, the world’s top producer and exporter of the metal. “What General Motors wants and we want is a resilient supply chain for North America,” Vianode CEO Burkhard Straube told Reuters.

Another month, another Consumer Price Index inflation report, the show-stopping data dump of our inflation-weary universe. 

This one pointed to small progress in the inflation fight, with “core” prices in the US — which exclude volatile food and energy costs — increasing 0.2% in December from November, a slight deceleration from the 0.3% month-over-month increase reported in the last batch of monthly data. It may not be much, but we’ll take it.

Core Workout

On an annual basis, core CPI rose 3.2% in December, a welcome decrease from the 3.3% year-over-year increase that had lingered for the prior four months. In fact, Wednesday’s data trove showed the first annual core CPI deceleration since July. 

But you’d be forgiven for not noticing the slight downtick when checking your latest credit card statement. That’s because headline CPI figures — which do factor in energy and food — showed a slight uptick in inflation in December, with a couple key culprits mostly to blame:

• Headline CPI was up 0.4% month-over-month in December, an increase from November’s 0.3% figure. On an annual basis, CPI increased 2.9% in the last month of 2024, up from 2.7% in November.
• Gas prices were up 4.4% month-over-month (though down about 3% year-over-year). While grocery prices have barely budged overall, eggs were up 3.2% month-over-month, and a whopping 37% year-over-year (is it time to get anxious about bird flu?).

Across the Pond: Recent data out of Europe has been a bit of a mixed bag. The United Kingdom on Wednesday unveiled its latest round of inflation data, with consumer prices up 2.5% in December year-over-year, a deceleration from November’s 2.6% figure. Last week, results out of Germany showed that nation going the other way, with prices jumping 2.8% year-over-year in December, an acceleration from the month prior — adding even more turbulence to Berlin’s politics. And of course, everything is liable to change once the Trump 2.0 era officially kicks off on Monday. Buckle up.