Larry Fink, the CEO of the $11.6 trillion investing titan BlackRock, is used to making contrarian bets. The entire U.K. economy, much maligned in the past year, could be his latest one.
Fink says BlackRock is investing in U.K. assets “across the board” after being reassured by the Labour government’s “pro-growth” agenda, adding that the U.K. and Europe are entering a rebound era after discovering their “capitulation point.”
The 72-year-old BlackRock boss has spied an investing opportunity in the U.K., namechecking finance stocks like NatWest, Lloyds, and St. James’s Place as equities that were undervalued by a level of negativity that Fink thinks “was probably not warranted.”
In his interview with the Times, Fink pointed to several examples of shifting public practices that gave him confidence in the U.K.’s ability to discover fresh growth opportunities and argued that Keir Starmer’s government was focused on “hard issues.”
“It just resonated with me—that there are so many fundamentally strong attributes about the UK and Europe and they’ve been so smothered by over-regulation, by too much control,” he said. “And to me, it was just very clear we were at a capitulation point.”
Fink’s positive ruminations on the U.K. economy are a divergence from popular opinion, which has painted the U.K. as a growth laggard on the cusp of both a recession and exodus of its richest citizens.
Businesses have complained about new national insurance obligations and flexible working policies that they argue make it harder to hire and grow. Meanwhile, there are reports that billionaires are kickstarting a mass exodus from the country owing to changes to non-dom tax regulations. Billionaire real estate investing brothers, Ian and Richard Livingstone, were among the latest to exit the U.K., joining thousands of others since last May’s election.
The U.K. is also facing pressure on its already tight public finances from the Donald Trump administration’s threats of widespread retaliatory tariffs that would significantly affect growth.
These pressures appear to be driving the dominant sentiment among the U.K. public.
An Ipsos Mori poll revealed 75% of Brits expect the economy to get worse over the next 12 months, marking the gloomiest sentiment among the public since the survey was launched in 1978. The group’s Economic Optimism Index registered a -68, worse than the cost-of-living crisis in 2022, the global financial crisis in 2008, and a global recession kickstarting in 1980.
That sentiment is similar among businesses, which are beginning to build their defenses ahead of a possible recession induced by the tariff war. The U.K.’s Purchasing Managers Index fell to its lowest level since 2022 in March, suggesting businesses are reducing activity owing to low confidence.
Despite this evidence to the contrary, however, Fink is cheerier on the U.K. than he was in the final months of Rishi Sunak’s premiership. Bloomberg reported last year that BlackRock was among the investment groups being wooed by Chancellor Rachel Reeves to help rebuild Britain.
“I have more confidence in the UK economy today than I did a year ago.”
Fink laments lack of space
One obstacle that might halt BlackRock’s march on the U.K. is office space.
Fink is keen to bring all of his approximately 3,000 London employees under one roof to expedite the group’s bet on the U.K. He’s being foiled, though, by a lack of available real estate.
“I am so short of space here in London with all our acquisitions. I need an office tomorrow but there is nothing here,” Fink told the Times.
“If I knew I could put the shovel in the ground in the next 12 months, I’d build our own.”
This story was originally featured on Fortune.com
Original Source Link
