New York (AFP)

He does not have the popularity of the billionaire Warren Buffett but his influence is immense: Larry Fink pilot Blackrock, a financial monster of 7,000 billion dollars entrusted by individuals, pension funds or unions.

At the age of 67, this father of three, still very badly dressed, wants to use his power to write the breviary of new capitalism while boasting of healing the wounds caused by the old, such as the widening of social inequalities and the impoverishment of the most fragile.

"To thrive over time, every business must not only produce financial results, but also show how it makes a positive contribution to society," he advocated in January 2018 in his traditional annual letter to the bosses.

On Tuesday, Mr. Fink promised to make Blackrock a leader in sustainable and responsible investment, attempting to respond to criticisms of the double play by NGOs.

The progressive image of this major donor to the Democratic Party in the United States contrasts with France, where Blackrock finds himself accused by opponents of President Macron's pension reform of wanting to impose a funded pension plan.

The categorical and repeated denials of the company, which is not a pension fund and does not offer retirement savings plans, does nothing. BlackRock does not hesitate to give its analysis on the laws likely to affect the money of its customers, as in this case.

- "Hypocrite" -

Mr. Fink, partly bald head and thin glasses, has the frank speech that distinguishes him from other CEOs in Donald Trump's America, bitterly divided on immigration, weapons or climate change.

"Larry Fink is ready to tackle controversial social and political issues that most of the big bosses want to avoid at all costs," Andrew Ross Sorkin, star reporter for The New York Times and CNBC, told AFP.

It doesn't matter whether the US economy still runs on fossil fuels or whether some of its customers live in regions where climate-skeptics are flourishing, it recently threatened to oppose directions that were not very sensitive to sustainable development. It has the means to be heard: BlackRock is a shareholder of ExxonMobil and Chevron.

For billionaire Samuel Zell, Larry Fink is "extraordinarily hypocritical".

"When you use people's money to promote a point of view with which they could disagree is to cross the red line," criticizes Charles Elson, a specialist in governance issues at the University of Delaware.

- From Black Monday to Blackrock -

Larry Fink co-founded BlackRock with another American finance titan, Stephen Schwarzman, in 1988, almost a year after "Black Monday", that day of October 19, 1987 when Wall Street collapsed.

The goal is not only to invest other people's money but to give them sophisticated tools to manage it.

BlackRock created a risk assessment system called Aladdin, thousands of computers that monitor and examine each financial product to determine how it could be affected by events of all kinds.

Seduced, the American authorities will turn to Larry Fink during the 2008 crisis to assess and help administer the toxic assets of the companies over which the federal government has taken control.

BlackRock will watch over the $ 130 billion in rotten assets of the bankruptcy insurer AIG and the $ 1,200 billion in mortgage-backed financial products from mortgage refinancing agencies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

- More powerful than Bolloré -

Larry Fink "is one of the most powerful men on Wall Street," said former investment banker William Cohan. "Imagine when Vincent Bolloré was in the sky. Larry Fink is 100 times more powerful than that".

"He controls a lot of businesses, a lot of jobs and a lot of businesses," said Cohan.

BlackRock, which manages $ 7.429 billion in assets, owns shares in all of the CAC 40 companies.

The CEO of a large American bank told AFP that he could not speak on Larry Fink because he was expected to ask his support soon to keep his job.

However, Mr. Fink had a long journey across the desert.

Freshly graduated from the University of California (UCLA), he began his career on Wall Street in 1976 at the investment bank First Boston.

He is then responsible for designing the financial products backed by mortgage loans. Legend has it that he developed, with another trader, Lewis Ranieri, the debt securitization market, used by traders to make the subprime loans that caused the 2008 financial crisis.

This collector of popular American art then knows a meteoric rise but the fall will be just as spectacular.

In 1986, he speculated on an increase in interest rates, but the opposite happened. The losses are colossal. Falling into disgrace, Mr. Fink left the firm two years later.

This exit is, with the purchase of Lehman Brothers shares, three months before the resounding bankruptcy of the bank, and the bankruptcy in 2010 of a New York residential apartment complex, bought at full price, one of its most big failures.

Mr. Fink declined requests from AFP but his entourage answered questions and by email.

© 2020 AFP