Our commitment to investment excellence holds true throughout, whether for a single unitholder, or a platform offering a range of our products. This may be a well rehearsed marketing mantra for many firms but Blackrock’s dedication to clients’ interests goes much further, forming the foundation of our business activity. We always act as a fiduciary for clients, never trading as a principal on our own behalf.
Blackrock is the world’s largest asset management company, with US$3.66 trillion in assets under management across equity fixed income, cash management, alternative investment, real estate and advisory strategies. Size is all very well, but far more important is how we can leverage our firm-wide resources and breadth of expertise to benefit you and your clients.
We offer a wide range of investment strategies from rigorous active management to highly efficient index tracking. We want you to have as much choice as possible, and our passive offering is a great example of this. In addition to our range of index unit trusts,
We are delighted to also be home to iShares, the global leader in exchange traded funds (ETFs).
iShares has over 480 funds globally across equities, fixed income and commodities,. These iShares funds are bought and sold like stocks on securities exchanges. iShares ETFs are primarily physically based but do offer a small number of swap based ETFs where limitations in accessing local markets exist, such as Russia or India.
iShares has over 100 ETFs listed on the London Stock Exchange and are available through several market-leading open architecture wrap platforms where assets under management have increased dramatically over the last year.
This increase has been primarily due to discretionary managed funds choosing to use iShares ETFs to implement asset allocation decisions, alongside increased awareness of iShares products and their benefits among Financial Planners.
These benefits include the flexibility and liquidity offered by intraday trading, low total cost of ownership, diversification benefits that come from accessing an entire index through one single trade and the transparency of being able to view full daily fund holdings on the iShares website.