In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen - Larry Fink CEO of BlackRock

Episode Date: January 11, 2023

In this episode, Nicolai Tangen talks to Larry Fink, CEO and Chairman of BlackRock, the largest fund in the world. Check out the episode to learn about how BlackRock became the largest fund in the world, the famous letter he writes annually and his thoughts on the ESG backlash. The production team on this episode were PLAN-B’s Martin Oftedal and Olav Haraldsen Roen. Background research were done by Sigurd Brekke with additional input from our portfolio manager Erlend Kvendseth.Links:Watch the episode on YouTube: Norges Bank Investment Management - YouTubeWant to learn more about the fund? The fund | Norges Bank Investment Management (nbim.no)Follow Nicolai Tangen on LinkedIn: Nicolai Tangen | LinkedInFollow NBIM on LinkedIn: Norges Bank Investment Management: Administrator for bedriftsside | LinkedInFollow NBIM on Instagram: Explore Norges Bank Investment Management on Instagram Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hi, everyone, and welcome to our podcast, In Good Company. I'm Nikolaj Tangen, the CEO of the Norwegian Southern Wealth Fund, and your host today. In this podcast, I talk to the leaders of some of the largest companies we are invested in so that you can learn what we own and meet these impressive leaders. Today I'm speaking to Larry Fink, or some might say the king of Wall Street. He is the CEO of the biggest money manager on the planet, BlackRock. BlackRock is over six times as big as our sovereign wealth fund, and Larry has built this fund all the way from scratch. Wow, really, really impressive.

We own almost 1% of the company, translating into 10 billion kroner or $1.2 billion. You seriously don't want to miss this episode. Stay tuned. First of all, Larry, very welcome onto this podcast. We're absolutely thrilled and honored to have you on. Now, I thought the Norwegian Someone Wealth Fund was pretty big until I saw that you guys have six times as much money as we have. So how do you think about the size of BlackRock? Well, let me start off and say the money that you manage is all your money. The money I manage, none of it's our money. So I start with that foundation. I always have started that our job is to be a fiduciary

to every client. Whether that client is giving us $1,000 of their savings or a large fund that's giving us tens of billions of dollars of money to manage, we have to treat them the same. We have to be thoughtful about what are they looking to do. We're not a firm that people are going to invest in us if they're interested in short-term trades. That's what a hedge fund's for. We have hedge funds at a firm, but generally I would think of BlackRock as somebody where from small investors

to large investors come to BlackRock with the idea that we could give them better contextual knowledge to help them formulate a decision as to where do they want to put their money and how should that be managed and organized. But even though Larry, the assets are not yours, it gives you as a firm an enormous influence. And how do you want to use that influence? The last thing I ever want to do is use my personal opinions, my personal feelings on how we invest. That's not my fiduciary responsibility. Where we could use our knowledge is helping clients formulate a strategy, a portfolio, a desire. We believe that,

let's just talk about the energy transition, which is so topical in the United States. We believe the energy transition has to be very aggressive, aggressive in making sure we have enough hydrocarbons to have a fair and just transition, which we don't have now. At the same time, we have to rapidly have our investors invest in new technologies to find new solutions so we can bring down the green premium. Our job is to say, and we've always said it, do not divest of hydrocarbons. We've always said that. We also said that we believe gas is going to play a longer role in the decarbonization future than many people think, future than many people think, which means to me, we are going to have to find more and more solutions towards sequestration and carbon capture, because I just don't believe we're going to wake up one day and find all these new technologies that can bring down the green premium

and make renewable energy to be as competitive across the board. So I don't want to use, as you use the word, influence on anything. I don't want to use, as you use the word influence on anything, I don't believe that is our responsibility. Our job is to use our information that we seek, raise topical issues. A topical issue is climate risk is investment risk, okay? Some people don't agree, some people do, but I'll use that to frame a conversation.

And probably the most important thing that we want to do with every client, with every regulator, with any citizen is to have a conversation. I mean, what I think is missing in the world today, we need to have conversation. We need to be sharing a meal with them. If we can have a conversation, I do believe we can minimize the extremes and then we can move forward together. Now, we're not going to agree on everything. No one's going to agree on everything, but we can formulate a means to just build better consensus building. I actually believe what is the greatest thing that is missing in the world today, especially for savers, is hope. I believe there's more fear in the world,

more fear from savers, what the markets did, what the bond market did, more fear, who do I trust, what media source I should trust. And so with that backdrop of this fear, I believe BlackRock has a huge responsibility to try to be part of a conversation. One of the ways you communicate with the world is through your yearly letter. Tell us about it. Well, the letter started in 2012 when I realized that there's a huge responsibility with the indexers to making sure that our vote counts. The other thing is you look at the letters from 2012 to 15, most of the narrative was about long-termism.

Why short-termism is not good, especially with 54% of all the assets we manage are retirement assets or some sort. So we have this long responsibility. So the letter was just a statement to all the companies we invest in, we want leadership in their boards to focus more on long-term issues. We also asked board members and management to provide more transparency so we understand how they're moving forward. We actually asked in 2012 to 15, can we have access to talk to the board? Before that, most companies would not allow their board members to have any conversations with their investors. Do you come up with the ideas for the letter? I think I plagiarize everybody. Most of the information I get is from conversations with

clients. I mean, I then synthesize it and write up the ideas. Yes. So the ideas are mine, but they're from a series of internal and external conversations. And I get this little kernel of information with this client, one little kernel of information with this client. And I just bring it together as the year ends. What are the cleverest people you speak to? You know what? you know what i wouldn't say there's any one type of characteristic that i find inspiring with any it could it just could be one little fact or it could be somebody who's very aberrant in the way he or she thinks and i just found that that little narrative to be really important and i write it down and just pack it away the other things because is because I visit so many clients, Nikolai, you know,

after a series of meetings, let's say eight meetings a day for a bunch of days, you can then weave a thread of what's on their mind. You know, so having that type of convening ability of having these meetings, you really get a good foundation of what's on the mind of our clients worldwide. And it's really rare that clients in Asia are thinking much different than clients in Europe or clients in North America. There is that thread, and that's the beauty of the global capital markets. And getting back to BlackRock for one second, one of the most important points why we were successful, we made a foundational belief when we started the company that the global capital markets are going to be the engine of economic prosperity.

The role of banking is going to be diminished. And obviously, over the last 30 odd years, and it's accelerating post-financial crisis with Dodd-Frank and Basel, the role of banks have diminished worldwide extraordinarily fast. And the rise of the global capital markets, it's a mirror image of that. And that was one of the foundational beliefs for BlackRock that we thought that we could play a role in the global capital markets. Linking back to the letters, much of the letters and the foundational letters about long-termism, the role of the capital markets, more transparency. And then as America and Europe became more divided,

it was very clear to me that the role of a management team, a CEO, a board, and the whole focus on stakeholder capitalism became more and more something that I believed in, that if we are going to maximize profits for our shareholders, who are the primacy of every company, your shareholders, you have to be fully connected and engaged with your employees, your clients, and your communities. If you can do that well and successfully, you then have more durable long-term profits, and your shareholders are the big beneficiary of that. Your letter about stakeholder capitalism was quite groundbreaking in terms of changing the focus. It was still about long-termism, Nikolai. It was still about long-termism.olai it was still about long-termism what can

create durable long-term profits that's the whole foundation and look at there's all and it and it was groundbreaking and it was and it's hot hot it's still hotly debated some people i had a u.s senator point his finger at me and said, stakeholder capitalism is communism. So, you know, I don't think of the Nordics, they think that stakeholder capitalism is communism. I think, you know, from our visits to the Nordics, I would say almost the entire society of the Nordics believes that the responsibility of companies is beyond just their shareholders. It is their employees. It is their community. It is their community.

It is their clients. We call it common sense. But I just want to go take one step back here. So it's quite extraordinary that you, as a CEO of the biggest asset manager in the world, are still seeing clients. So tell us about it. I mean, this kind of service client mindset, is that something? Tell us about it.

Where does that come from? That was the whole foundation of the firm, listen to your clients. By listening to your clients, you then have the ability to understand what their needs are. And then through that iterative process, I believe you can stay in front of the needs of clients. You cannot, if you don't understand what's on your mind or your your clients or where do they believe they're taking their business, their companies, it's hard for you then to anticipate where they're going next. So I believe at least 30% of my role has to be working with clients worldwide, spending time with them, understanding it. And that's how the other part of my career my job is strategy i get i

understand strategy a lot more by understanding the needs of our clients worldwide but do you think that um that focus on clients i believe that when you were young you worked in your father's shoe shop yeah i did what have you taken from that experience and brought into black robe and that was just how to sell yourself and how to be patient, especially when somebody wants to try on 12 pairs of shoes. We were always very client-centric. And keep in mind,

even when I was, my first career, when I was at First Boston, setting up the mortgage industry in the late 70s, early 80s, we had to work both. This is the uniqueness of my career. Not only did I run a trading desk and started a new market, but I had to then go to the originators of the mortgages.

I had to sell ourselves to buy those mortgages off a savings and loan or insurance company. We had to learn risk management to package those and then go to the clients and tell them why this is a superior investment versus owning, let's say, a corporate bond back then or a treasury. So all of that was probably from the foundation of starting a new market. And I think starting new markets, you have to not only understand the intended risks of what you're creating, you have to understand the origination side of that, and then you have to understand and sell yourself to the client so they are better equipped. And that was the foundation of BlackRock when we started it. But when you think about how you built up BlackRock,

what has been the most important decisions on the way, the most critical junctures? Well, I would just say the consistency of being client-centric and being principled. I mean, we've always been a really highly principled firm. Culture is another place where I spend my 30% of my time and allocation, making sure that our culture is what we want it to be you know lapses in firms are very easy but if you don't have a culture of identification problems of mitigating problems and correcting problems you know you know you generally fall down every firm can have a growth spurt but growth spur, we all know don't last forever.

You're going to have attended problems from all that growth. How are you mitigating that? How you're managing that? How are you trying to reposition? You know, we all live in a market that are, that is very cyclical and volatile. And you need a, you need to create a culture that is robust and resilient, that is thoughtful and creative. You need to create a dynastism where people want to be part of that, that they believe in the firm.

They believe in the purpose of the firm. And so to me, if you don't have a strong culture, a strong, purposeful organization, you're going to have bouts of success, but you're not going to have the longevity of success. What's the most important part of the BlackRock culture? you're going to have bouts of success, but you're not going to have the longevity of success. What's the most important part of the Black Belt culture? We strongly believe in team. We use a pronoun, a we, not I. We must live our principles every day. I mean, all the founders are still friends, and many of them had other careers during the years

and doing other things, But we're still friends. And it's about a culture of belonging. Do you look at the team as a family or a sports team? The more intimate, direct reports as family, as a firm, it's a sports team. I spend a lot of time thinking about the management of sports. And when you think about these athletes, I don't care what field, these athletes who are best in their field, they're generally highly individual.

They're generally at a young age, learn that they have to be a very aggressive and it's all about them. And they don't have the skill sets generally to be a team, but it's that great manager coach who tries to blend, I would say, these individual specimens into a team and give them the confidence that if you work as a team, the outcomes are far better. And the key is you can always build that team with superlative results and winning the championship in one year. Everybody can rally for a year to get that one thing done. I don't care about those coaches or managers. I don't care about those coaches or managers.

What I get inspired by are those coaches or managers who can go in their field for five-ish years, get the championship. So who's the best coach you come across? Oh, my gosh. I mean, you got Phil Jackson in the United States who coached the Chicago Bulls and the L.A. Lakers and had nine champions. And every one of those athletes were superb. And every one of them were probably taught about, you know, you got to be first, you got to be first, you got to be first. Being first does not win a championship. It is about the blending. I think basketball is where you see the greatest amount of individuality and to put those 10 people together and make it a team with regularity to me those are the inspirational managers leaders for me what is the key to

building a team it's understanding the purpose of an organization if you want to be the best in history it's not about winning one time it's not about winning two time. It's not about winning two times. You might be, you know, a footnote in the history books by winning two champions or being a good firm for one or two years, and then you blow it out. To me, it's about this long-termism and building a culture, a team, building a principle around that and trying to carry that forward. And, you know, we've been doing this for 34 years. And, you know, I believe there, you know, we've been doing this for 34 years. And, you know, I believe it's about this relentless pursuit. So if you hire, so what do you look for when you hire? So let's say now you're interviewing me, you are thinking about hiring me.

What kind of things do you ask me? So I'm the last to interview. I don't interview a person for his or her skill sets. I assume through the interviewing process, their skill sets are good. Now, there may be one little thing that I want to ask about his or her career and their path. But the first question I'll ask you, okay, let's assume this is your resume. What is not on this that you need to tell me about? That's the first question I had generated.

Well, I'm not going to tell you because it's so bad, right? Right. But that's, I, you know, I can read what's there. You know, I assume the fact that I'm interviewing you, people have, they believe in your skill set for the various jobs that you're being interviewed for. I want to know about you what makes you tick? Okay. That's always my first question. What should I know that's not on your resume? Larry, what is it that is not on your resume that we should know about you?

What's not on my resume right now? I mean, I'm a big, big family man. I'm a grandfather of seven people that wouldn't need to be on my resume. So it's more, I would tell you something more personal about me that I'm not frightened of exposing my vulnerabilities. Changing tacks a bit here. Why is it important to think about ESG when we invest? Over the last two years, if you were, if you divested of energy stocks, you got, you underperformed dramatically. This is why I've always said you cannot divest. And let's be clear, in the United States, the energy complex is massive and the jobs.

And so you have governmental officials who are in those states where the energy complex is large. And that's across coal and gas and oil and they're supporting their country their state their region and i understand that and the problem in government is they're too short term they're focusing on their their district they have you know and transitions are always painful. We have a life history as human beings of transitions. Transitions are rough. They're awful. You have big winners and big losers. Today in this more real-time, just-in-time political cycles,

news cycles, having big losers creates a noise of the people losing. I should add here, Larry, that we really concur with your thinking about not divesting and instead going into a dialogue with companies. We are exactly in the same camp because if you divest, somebody irresponsible is going to end up with the shares and it's not going to bring the world to a better place. My epiphany was exactly that. Without identifying the energy company, I was with a CEO of a big energy company. He was telling me he has to divest out of an emerging world country where he has refineries.

And the president of the country is begging him not to sell. Begging him. because who he would be selling to would be a private firm within the country that will actually degrade the force, the region more. And the epiphany came to me. This is a good example of a conversation of that conversation. I said, that's where I came up with the idea. We cannot divest. Divestiture doesn't change the world at zero.

It just moves it from public hands to private hands. And so the insanity of forcing divestiture so private hands can do it. What do you think is going to be the next big thing in ESG investing? It's going to have to be sequestration and decarbonization alongside blue hydrogen blue hydrogen still has a you know obviously huge potential hard to execute hard to do you know everybody in europe's talking about hydrogen but nobody wants a hydrogen electrolyzer there and so you know it's we're going back to the same arguments. But I do believe this is why BlackRock is working with every energy company. We just did with our, obviously we do, on behalf of our investors, we just created the biggest sequestration of carbon in the United States. And the returns for our investors are going to be in the 20%.

So we're doing good and they're great investments. Because I do believe we're going to need hydrocarbons longer than people think. And the only way to mitigate the utilization of hydrocarbons is being very aggressive in the sequestration. A slightly different topic. We have taken a strong position when it comes to CEO pay. Do you think there is such a thing as too much pay? Of course. And it should be totally aligned to the performance of a company. But why are you guys not more vocal about it? I think we have been. But let me be clear also.

I do not want an arbitrage of private companies having higher CEO pay than public companies. Once again, the problem I have is it is more advantageous to remain private or to take yourself private, and you can reap much more benefits. I believe in public markets. I believe in the global capital markets being public. I believe we have more transparency. I believe CEO pay, management pay should be totally correlated to the relationship of what you're returning to your shareholders.

And when you have a bad year and your shareholders have bad years, your comp should be cut a lot. I'm very strong about that because I'm not involved in any of the voting, but our team is supposed to be correlating comp versus shareholder returns over time, looking at them and adjusting that. But we are not against high pay CEOs if the shareholders are benefiting too. Now, I believe our views are a little different than European views. So European views have a more what I would call a socialistic view that they believe that companies, public company CEOs should be much lower. My worry about Europe is more and more great companies are going to be in the United States. I mean, it's a big world out there. And, you know, there's a big reason why more high quality Ph.D. students from Europe ultimately come to the United States and work.

So I believe in, you know, in free trade of capitalism. Nikolai, you ran a private fund. You know the difference between public and private. But you chose to go into the role that you presently have with the full knowledge that your COP is going to be considerably lower. And you did that with purpose and desire. And that's great. And it's the best thing I ever did. I'm confident in it. And I'm jealous that you did it because I want to do that one day, but I don't want to admonish and hurt public CEOs versus companies that are in their field

that are private. There should be a correlation. This gets back to government policy related to ESG or government. We need to make sure, this is why I've always said, I don't believe in scope three, you know, because I don't want to be the environmental police. Okay. If governments want every company to move forward on decarbonization, ask every company, but don't ask public shareholders to, you know, to police these other companies on scope three. I'm perfectly responsible of identifying what my scope one and two admissions are. I'm not going companies on scope three. I'm perfectly responsible of identifying what my scope one and two admissions are. I'm not going to do scope three. And it's the same idea. We need to make sure that we are not admonishing just public companies, that if we want a societal

change, let's do it for all companies. The problem is so much is done conveniently. It's so convenient to just do public companies and they don't want to go the extra mile. And I think Europe is more at fault than the United States in this. And that is one of the reasons why I believe Europe has less innovation than the United States, which is a huge systemic problem of Europe. And privately, when I talk to political leaders in Europe, they all recognize that they won't say it publicly. Europe does not have the same innovation because there are limitations. Now, I'm very pleased what's going on in Europe with the rise of private companies and the rise of fintech and more tech companies. And maybe that's going to

change. But the question, will they ever go public with that societal force on things like that? I'd love to ask you some questions on ownership. So just to explain to the listeners, you have active investing where you pick single individual stocks and then you have passive investing or index investing where you basically buy the whole broad index. And you guys are big in both, but you are huge in passive investing or index investing, where you basically buy the whole broad index. And you guys are big in both, but you are huge in passive investing. Do you think all these passive assets amplifies greed and fear and increase bubbles and these kind of things?

I think there is a strong conversation related to that very question. And all the research that we have seen is the exact opposite. But where there's more volatility in some of the indexes, there actually is probably the greatest change in the, let's use ETFs because that's what I'm really talking about the subset of indexing. I would say to you 50 plus percent of any daily volume on any ETF is active investing. And if I'm wrong, it's probably 70 percent. More and more investors are looking to get their exposures, not through an individual stock. They're getting their exposures through an ETF. And they're actively managing those ETFs

where they have the exposures. And they're actively managing those exposures. You can do it with more liquidity. You can do it with more ease. And I believe the narrative is looking backwards. I believe the key today is determining how many people are using ETFs for active purposes. And that's a better barometer of market sentiment than people realize. And when I then moved to the bond market, where my whole foundation is, why on earth

do you want to own 3,000 bonds to replicate the Bloomberg index, if you wanted to be close to that, where you could buy one or two different ETFs, one that is a credit exposure, one is a convexity exposure, one is a duration exposure, and you can get 90% of all the exposures of bonds. You don't need to own 3,000 bonds. You can own a few ETFs and navigate around convexity or credit or duration through using ETFs. But if you look at the stats, and let's just stick with equities for a little while, you know, you look at the stats, you, Vanguard and State Street together control nearly 20% of the American stock market. What are the potential problems with that? A year ago, we announced something called voting choice, where we developed the technology to give the vote back to the asset owner.

And I did a recent CEO letter that you received. And we are trying to expand that to retail. We want to democratize all the votes. And if we can democratize the vote, almost all the societal questions on the role of indexing and its responsibility is mitigated quite extensively. Now, one other new technology, obviously, in light of all that's going on in crypto, look, we're not surprised at all these blow-ups. We're surprised at the speed of the blow-ups. We are spending a great deal of time on the architecture of crypto because I believe the future in bonds and stocks is going to be tokenization of bonds and stocks. If we all

had a DeFi ledger of every ownership, I don't have to vote on anything. Every asset owner through their tokenization, we know who's the beneficial owner. And that's why we are spending so much time on architecture of crypto and DeFi. So we believe the applications are going to be monstrously meaningful in the future. And we hope there's a future one day when we tokenize all bonds and stocks. We can identify every beneficial owner across the board. Everybody knows it.

And the beneficial owner, whether it's that thousand dollar investor, he or she could vote their shares as they choose to, or the big sovereign fund can do it their way. And we are not responsible. I wanted to ask you some other questions. What do you think about the working from home model? Working from home during the first year of COVID before a vaccination was so successful. It worked so well beyond any imagination. I mean, all our fears were shown that our fears were not necessary.

And during that one year, we were able to very well work in our verticals. Everybody was proper and all that. But over time, working remotely has degraded every firm. It's a breakdown of culture. Young people cannot learn the horizontal across the different components of the business. They don't understand the holistic components of how to do business. They're just in their little vertical. Are you productive at home? Of course not. Not as well as I'm here. I mean, I'm just not.

Same here. Same here. No, I'm better than I've ever imagined. You know why? Because I can't walk the hallways at home. I can't walk into somebody else's office. What's going on? I can't walk onto a trading floor. I can make phone calls. I can do Zoom calls like this. But no, you don't have the most important conversations are not the planned conversation. The most important conversation is after the planned conversation. OK, what else is going on? What else? What's on your mind? What are you feeling? That's how you get translational ideas, not vertical ideas. What's the best piece of leadership advice you have ever been given?

You got to be authentic. You got to be who you are. You got to show it. You got to be proud of who you are. I think you said at some stage that you are still a student. In what ways are you still a student? I have a bad day if I don't learn two or three new facts every day. I mean, everybody should try to learn something new every day, something I need to do. And so to me, when you stop being a student, somebody is passing you by because another person is learning. And keep in mind, I mean, I came up with that idea

from my first career when I thought I knew it all and the market evolved and changed and I lost money. OK, we all do that. And I never forgave myself for what happened. Yeah, because you and your team lost $100 million in 1986. That's at first Boston. Yeah. What did you learn from that? Well, what I learned was we should have been fired the quarter before when we made $140 million because we were taking way too much risk and it showed up the next quarter. And we didn't have proper risk management. And so today, and this is the whole foundation of BlackRock, building a whole firm on risk management.

And we have now the most important risk management system in the world today. know the most important risk management system in the world today um you know and uh it's on the back of that my losses at first boxing i'm knowing your risk managing your platform understanding it and keep in mind when i first told the story when we started the firm about this whole risk management and they said well is that risk avoidance i said no it's just knowing your risk means when you if you think you can take more risk, you can add more risk. When you think you're too much risk, you can mitigate it. It's just it's just allows you to more properly, systematically navigate your portfolios and understanding your risk during different scenarios. But generally speaking, how do you cope with setbacks? I think this is one thing

that's culturally part of BlackRock and it's part of my DNA. When there's a problem, I want everybody running into the fire, not running away from the fire. And that's a hard thing to teach people. Our job, I want everybody, even if it's not part of their business, help out, run into the fire, try to mitigate it and fix it. You know, I don't need people to be standby, you know, watching the fire. You know, this is something I've always said too, I do not want observers. I don't need people sitting in the stands. I want people in the play every day, using a sports analogy. It's interesting. I interviewed Lisa Su at AMD. She said that you have to run towards the problems,

and it seems like you were sharing that attitude. Yeah, because, look, great firms are firms that mitigate problems sooner. We all are going to have problems. We all have judgment errors. We all have and we find it every human being. We all have an issue. The faster we identify it, mitigate it, the better you'll be. Great firms are not firms who just make tons of money in the upside.

Everybody does that. That's one of the, you know, the ocean rises and everybody makes more money. You know, the key of success is mitigating problems so you can you can respond and when you have problems the amount of management at time on the problems is enormous you don't have as much time being offensive seeing clients focusing on the next idea the next trend and so the faster you can mitigate a problem the more you can be offensive again you meet a lot of people when were you last starstruck gosh i don't know if i ever was uh why not we're all people that's very true i you know we're all people you know i mean we're we all have the same issues we all generally have insecurities and fears. I learned that really

quickly. I'm never starstruck. I mean, I enjoy people. So I love being with people. To me, this is just part of our lives. If I had to say I was starstruck, but I was an observer. I was in the audience. I was starstruck at the majesticness of Bruce Springsteen when he did his show on Broadway and the stories around his songs and his life. You know, to me, that is a moment where I could always relish. Yeah, yeah. My last question to you, we have a lot of, well, we have got thousands of students listening into this.

And what is your advice to young people? Always focus on what you're passionate about, what makes you move and inspire you and go into that field. Never go into a field that you're doing it because your parents want you there or you might make more money or you might have more influence. The best way of making a mark is being in a field that inspires you that where you can be the most authentic. You know, as a parent, I saw my three children, same mother and father. They're so wildly different. Now I see my seven grandchildren that are wildly different. We all have a different, unique spark. That's the beauty of humanity. We all have a different unique spark. That's the beauty of humanity. We all have this individuality. And, you know, we all think we have to conform or do what people want.

And, you know, you generally are not successful there. Go into the field that totally inspires you, that gives you a smile, that you can differentiate yourself, that you can really build something and grow into something. And, you know, and your first job is never your last job in most cases. Go, you know, go. Your first job should be go where you can learn the most. And the one thing I say, because this year we've hired 540 young college students. When I give my speech to them, I say, if you believe your days of learning are over, it's time for you to leave BlackRock. If you don't believe you're a student and the demands on you to learn more and more now, you're mistaken. You just acquired your entry level

to get into this job. Okay. You're starting at ground zero. You may have been the best in your class. You may have been a great athlete. You may have been whatever you were, but now you're starting at ground zero you may have been the best in your class you may have been a great athlete you may have been whatever you were but now you're starting at ground zero with so many other people how do you differentiate yourself as being your authentic self and then being a student and when you stop learning you're you're not going to be at the finish line with somebody else great well you for sure are your authentic self. And Larry, it's been tremendous and an honor and a pleasure to have you on the broadcast. Thank you so much. Nikolaj, thank you. And thank you, everyone at Norges for the partnership,

the relationship. And I am confident there's so many things we'd be doing together in the future. Wonderful. Thank you so much.