BLK BlackRock Inc

By Sarah Krouse and Jenny Strasburg 

Giant money manager BlackRock Inc. has hired longtime Credit Suisse Group AG executive Philip Vasan as part of its push to attract more individual clients.

Mr. Vasan, Credit Suisse's head of private banking for the Americas, is leaving the Swiss lender this month after 23 years, as the bank previously announced. At BlackRock, he will coordinate efforts to develop products and new portfolios for private banks and independent wealth advisers. He will join the firm in September, according to an internal memo provided by the company.

As head of investments and portfolio solutions for BlackRock's U.S. wealth advisory unit, Mr. Vasan, 57 years old, will report to Salim Ramji, who last year became head of that business after previously working on firm-wide strategy.

The idea behind the new role is to customize ways to combine actively managed mutual funds and index-tracking products such as iShares exchange-traded funds. That will allow the firm to sell a broader array of products that trade in stocks, bonds and other assets, generating more fees for BlackRock.

"Clients want both active and index. Our strategy going forward is to offer advisors the range of solutions they need--and in the process create deeper and stronger relationships," Mr. Ramji wrote in the internal memo.

BlackRock is gearing up for new U.S. rules designed to protect individual clients' interests in retirement planning. Analysts say the world's largest money manager is poised to benefit from a new set of U.S. Department of Labor rules governing how the financial industry delivers retirement-savings advice. The new so-called "fiduciary rule" is likely to benefit BlackRock's large passive-investing business, analysts say, by increasing overall client flows into lower-cost products like ETFs.

BlackRock, like many of its peers, is also seeking ways to marry its active and passive funds and tout the benefits of both types of investing.

The Labor Department rules are aimed at curbing billions of dollars in fees that savers pay annually for retirement-savings accounts, and at discouraging financial advisers from recommending products primarily to earn commissions for themselves.

Mr. Ramji said at BlackRock's mid-June investor day that part of its technology system, called Aladdin, that helps with portfolio management is increasingly being used by family offices and other financial advisers to create portfolios tailored to individual investors' risk and cost appetites.

Retail assets represented about 12% of BlackRock's $4.7 trillion in assets under management, and 35% of fees, in the first quarter. During the same period, the iShares exchange-traded fund unit accounted for 25% of assets and 35% of fees.

Before running Credit Suisse's U.S. private-banking unit, which the bank is winding down as part of a broad restructuring, Mr. Vasan built and led the bank's global prime-brokerage unit, which finances trades and loans money and securities to hedge funds and other asset managers. The Wall Street Journal reported in 2010 that under Mr. Vasan, the unit grew to generate about $2 billion in revenue for the investment bank as it took advantage of the Swiss bank's relative strength during the financial crisis.

Mr. Vasan previously ran Credit Suisse's global equity derivatives and convertibles business and was global head of foreign exchange. He has a doctorate in economics from Harvard University.

BlackRock started as a money manager for large institutional investors like pension funds and sovereign wealth funds. It has sought to boost its retail assets under management in recent years, including by combining its retail and iShares sales teams in 2012.

Last year, BlackRock bought robo-adviser FutureAdvisor and has since partnered with banks and brokerage firms to offer the digital-advice service to their clients. By mid-June about 5,000 retail clients were using the platform.

Write to Sarah Krouse at sarah.krouse@wsj.com and Jenny Strasburg at jenny.strasburg@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

July 12, 2016 12:00 ET (16:00 GMT)

BlackRock (NYSE:BLK)
Historical Stock Chart
From Mar 2024 to Apr 2024

BlackRock (NYSE:BLK)
Historical Stock Chart
From Apr 2023 to Apr 2024