MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

BlackRock: Investing guru Larry Fink tells Milei he will be visiting Argentina in May

Fink told Milei that it would “take a long time for investments to return to Argentina”

BlackRock CEO and founder Larry Fink told Argentine President Javier Milei in a virtual meeting that he would be visiting the South American country in May, and Casa Rosada Spokesman Manuel Adorni confirmed in Buenos Aires.

Milei later confirmed the news on his X account and said his conversation with Fink was a “total success.” Argentina's Ambassador to the United States, Gerardo Werthein, also participated in the meeting.

Fink's investment fund is believed to have assets worth over US$ 8.6 trillion worldwide. Although BlackRock invests in a wide variety of assets, it places about a tenth of the assets it manages in equities.

The 71-year-old son of a small shoe store owner in Los Angeles and a university professor, Fink was 13 when he made his debut in the stock market with the purchase of his first shares in the chemical company DuPont, with the money he had earned working in the family business. In the 1970s he completed his MBA and in the 1980s he joined the investment bank First Boston, where he worked until 1988, when BlackRock was founded with partner Robert Kapito to manage the personal savings of middle-class investors. Fink and Kapito both worked at First Boston, Credit Suisse, and other leading financial firms on Wall Street and in Europe.

Today it continues to manage the money of more than 35 million Americans and has offices in the world's major financial centers, including London, Hong Kong, Frankfurt, Milan, Dubai, Moscow, Mexico City, and São Paulo. It also has a very strong presence in Argentina, either through its holdings in multinationals that operate locally, such as Microsoft, Coca-Cola, Bayer, or Telefónica, or with the shares it bought in Argentine companies such as Mercado Libre, Tenaris, Grupo Galicia, Banco Macro, Telecom, Pampa Energía, TGN, Arcos Dorados (McDonald's), and Adecoagro.

Fink, who openly supports the Democratic Party in the United States and is regarded as one of the most powerful men in the world, told Milei that it would “take a long time for investment to return to Argentina” after his 2020 assessment of the country: “Governments jump from one policy to another and right now there are safer places to invest in Latin America,” he said during the Banco Santander conference “Rebuilding the future: the new normal.”

The Argentine government issued a statement explaining that Fink expressed “his interest in evaluating in situ investment opportunities in infrastructure in the country, which augurs a boost to national economic development.”

In a separate press release, the company noted that “BlackRock's Chairman and CEO, Larry Fink, and the President of Argentina had a constructive conversation about the potential for long-term infrastructure investment opportunities in Argentina.” Fink would also be “exploring a trip to Argentina to discuss potential infrastructure investments for our clients along with local investors,” it added.

Fink's last visit as BlackRock's top representative to Argentina took place in 2016, in times of then-President Mauricio Macri to discuss real estate undertakings. Then, the fund became one of Argentina's largest creditors together with PIMCO and Franklin Templeton leading up to the exchange rate crisis that led Macri to turn to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in 2018.

Black Rock is ranked 184th on the Fortune 500 list of the largest US corporations by revenue and Fink is considered one of America's most powerful billionaires. His words and decisions have a direct impact on the stability of markets, economies, and people's lives. After the 2008 global crisis initiated by mortgage-backed securities, in which these funds were part of the problem, the US government began to further regulate traditional banking but gave more leeway to these institutions.