In January 2022, Harvard University published the results of a study: people over 65 who live near U.S. fracking sites die earlier than people who do not live in such a neighborhood. Fracking has been practiced in the USA for decades. Environmental damage is well known. But now, for the first time, it’s been studied: are people dying because of it?

The elaborate study was conducted by 10 researchers led by Longxiang Li at the School of Public Health at the elite Harvard University: Exposure to unconventional oil and gas development and all-cause mortality in Medicare beneficiaries. Completed July 17, 2020, the study was published Jan. 27, 2022, in the journal Nature Energy. As early as August 2021, the study had been presented at the annual meeting of the International Society for Environmental Epidemiology (ISEE). So anyone who wanted to know could know. The U.S. government and the German government and the European Union, which have now ordered much more U.S. fracking gas because of the Russia boycott.

2.5 million fracking well sites

The health data examined were those of 15 million (15,198,496 to be exact) U.S. residents over the age of 65 who receive health care from the federal Medicare program and live near fracking sites. These health data were compared to other U.S. residents in this age group who do not live in such neighborhoods. Because 95 percent of people over age 65 in the U.S. are covered by Medicare, the study has high validity.

Health data were collected at more than 100,000 fracking sites, for the years 2001 to 2015, where a total of about 2.5 million drilling sites operated. The sites are located in all major fracking regions of the U.S.: from North Dakota to New Mexico, in the east from New York to Virginia, and in the south between Texas and Missouri.

Fracking: Environmentally harmful – of course!

Unconventional oil and gas development: That’s fracking. It involves blasting open layers of rock at great depths under high hydraulic pressure using sand, water, chemicals and other additives. This allows gas and oil to escape and then be collected.

The fact that air, groundwater, rivers, lakes, drinking water, plants and animals are poisoned in the process and that people’s health is harmed – all this has been known worldwide for years, actually. Thousands of citizens’ initiatives, scientists, municipal councils have been organizing resistance for three decades between California and Wyoming – mostly in vain and politically-major media denied.

The study cites numerous studies that confirm these findings: Ambient air contains volatile organic compounds, nitrogen oxides, and natural radioactive materials released by drilling. The drilling sites also emit organic compounds, chlorides, and suspended solids. In addition, methane gas also escapes uncontrollably during fracking: it is even more harmful to the climate than CO2. Known health effects include damage to pregnancies, the respiratory system, heart muscles and increased cancer – all of which have been known for a long time.

But not only harmful to the environment, but deadly

But the Harvard study asked for the first time: Does fracking also cause death? Answer: Yes: significantly elevated risk of all-cause mortality.

So fracking is not only harmful to the environment, it is also deadly to people. The closer they live to fracking well sites, the sooner they die. The increased mortality is 2.5 percent, but 3.5 percent in residences downwind of drilling sites. The study used 136 million (more accurately, 136,215,059) person-years – 2.5 percent of which would be about four million life-years that could have been lived but were destroyed by fracking.

Death rates are slightly higher in downwind than in upwind locations. This is due to the poisoning of the atmosphere. But that is just one of the causes of illness and death. The poisoning of water and soil, intensive truck traffic with diesel exhaust fumes, noise, continuous blinding lighting at night, etc. also play a role.

But what about fracking workers?

The study did not look at people under 65. There, too, there are “vulnerable groups,” such as babies or also – as in the case of the Corona virus – people with chronic diseases, which in the U.S. are known to begin in large numbers at an early age.

And another particularly important group has not been studied, and that is the people most directly exposed to the hazardous and toxic emissions: The workers at the drilling sites themselves, including the drivers who bring in and haul away the chemicals, auxiliary materials and vast amounts of water in pick up trucks and trucks. But fracking companies pushed through exemptions against the Occupational Safety and Health Administration OSHA, such as not having to shut down drilling rigs during repairs.

When asked, the head of the investigation stated: We haven’t studied that, and we don’t know of any studies on health and fatality impacts to workers at fracking sites.

And the climate and environmental movement in U.S.-led capitalism – Fridays for Future, Greenpeace, the UN, the European Union, the Greens – how dependent employees are doing, even in the companies directly relevant to the environment, such as the fracking industry here – big no-no.

Accelerated production

The fracking method was developed in the 1940s in the USA, especially by Halliburton. But it was not until around the turn of the millennium that production was accelerated on a large industrial scale: The U.S. wants to become independent of oil and gas imports. The big driver was U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney, previously CEO of Halliburton. He enforced theat the fracking companies did not have to comply with the Safe Drinking Water Act („Halliburton loophole“).

During the period covered by the study, from 2001 to 2015, fracking companies expanded the number of sites more than tenfold, from about 10,000 to more than 100,000. Thus, the study does not even take into account the acceleration of fracking, which accelerated again after 2015. This additional acceleration was triggered, among other things, by the construction of the Russian-German Nordstream 2 gas pipeline, which is opposed by the U.S. fracking industry and therefore also by U.S. governments, whether the president is Obama, Trump or Biden.

From 2015 to 2020, the number of fracking sites was increased to 160,000. Thus, from 2000 to 2018, the fracking industry increased production more than tenfold from 243 billion cubic feet to 3.61 trillion cubic feet. Exports to date go to 33 states.

More damage than recorded in the Harvard study

Thus, also in this respect, the Harvard study did not capture the full current extent of U.S. fracking.

The acceleration since 2015 has also been to drill even more wells at the same site than before: over 50 well sites at the same location (mega pads) are now not uncommon.

This also increases the amount and concentration of toxins in these sites, and thus the residences, beyond what was studied in the Harvard study.

High energy use: New and expensive fossil fuel economy

Not only is fracked gas environmentally harmful to produce, it also requires much more energy than traditional oil and gas production than, for example, in Russia.

And it’s not just production that requires more energy, but the entire rest of the supply chain: a high energy input is first used to liquefy the gas to one six-hundredth of its previous volume. Then comes the next high energy expenditure: the liquefied gas must be kept cooled to minus 162 degrees Celsius during transatlantic and transpacific transport.

And the construction of technically complex terminals also requires a lot of energy in addition to the raw materials, as do storage and regasification.

This additional, diverse energy input, along with the raw materials still needed for it (for extraction, ships, and terminals), represents a new and also expensive fossil fuel economy. The U.S. government is promoting the construction of new nuclear power plants, and the EU has now declared nuclear energy “sustainable.” The demand for coal is increasing – wind turbines and solar stations cannot keep up, also because the accelerated digitalization needs much more energy than before, for e-mobility, for clouds, for artificial intelligence in companies, hospitals, schools, universities….

Thus, the environmental policy of the EU and the USA turns out to be even much more harmful to the environment than the previous environmental policy, and also much more expensive, and finally deadly for people.

It is also an unspoken class warfare: companies purposefully locate sites near poor communities that are lower income and home to more people of color, the Harvard study notes. They are already weaker health-wise – and then add fracking to the mix.

Collective self-blinding

The EU and especially the German government are particularly “environmentally conscious.” They have established the new Western canon of values: ESG. E = Environment, S = Social, G = good governance. They all look admiringly to Harvard, for example the German Minister of Health, Karl Lauterbach who studied here twice and then earned his second doctorate, at the Institute for Public Health and then at the Medical School – but eyes closed and through: Collective self-blindness.

At “Corona” they invoke the protection of “vulnerable groups” – but the vulnerable groups at the fracking sites – they are allowed to die mercilessly for the new gas.

They are in “good company”: according to the head of the Harvard study, all leading U.S. media such as the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Boston Globe, the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post have not reported on the study.

Environmental champion BlackRock in the U.S. government

Speaking of which: The U.S.-led capitalist West’s leading environmental and sustainability admonisher, Laurence Fink – he apparently doesn’t care about fracking deaths either. Fink is head of BlackRock, the largest capital organizer in the Western world, based in New York, and propagandist of the ESG canon of values. No word on the Harvard study from here either.

BlackRock has three high-level managers in President Biden’s U.S. administration. (1) For example, the former head of BlackRock’s sustainable investing division is now the administration’s chief economist. It is pushing fracking, now further spurred by the Russia boycotts.

And BlackRock & Co are not just the leading shareholders in the U.S. defense industry, currently clammily accounting for their profits from 20 years of war in Afghanistan. BlackRock & Co are also leading shareholders in the U.S. fracking industry, such as EOG Resources, Devon Energy, Tellurian, Cheniere, and the largest fracking equipment suppliers Halliburton, Schlumberger, and Baker Hughes. For the rising profits of BlackRock’s environmental champions, not only people in faraway Afghanistan are dying, but also their own citizens in the U.S. itself.

And the overzealous buyer of U.S. fracked gas, Commission President von der Leyen – with Biden she agreed to triple LNG imports – is taking advice on implementing the new canon of values ESG from none other than BlackRock.

Fact deniers, enemies of science. Transatlantically organized self-blinding with (multiple) fatal outcome.

(1) More detailed on BlackRock & Co. see Werner Rügemer: The Capitalists of the 21. Century. An Easy-to-Understand Outline on the Rise of the new Financial Players. 308 pages, tredition 2020, also as e-Book

At a cost of many millions of dollars, euros, pesos, etc., 600 journalists from 148 media outlets and 117 countries have compiled the “Pandora Papers” over several months as part of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ): 2.94 terabytes of data with 11.9 million documents on shell companies in numerous financial dossiers. Tax evasion, money laundering, fraud, corruption and the like among 330 named heads of state and government, other politicians, sports and cultural celebrities, and thousands of businessmen and billionaires are suspected, are probable.

29,000 shell companies

The heads of state and politicians are almost exclusively from dozens of smaller and remote countries such as Jordan, Montenegro, Kenya, Congo, Dominican Republic, Panama, Peru, Brazil, Argentina, Honduras, Colombia, Pakistan, Philippines, Indonesia, Qatar. Western prominent politicians are the major exceptions, and most are no longer in office: ex-British Prime Minister Tony Blair, ex-Italian head of government Silvio Berlusconi, ex-Israeli Deputy Prime Minister Haim Ramon, ex-Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat, ex-European Commissioner John Dalli. Only three incumbent Western politicians in smaller states are mentioned: “Christian” Dutch Finance Minister Wopke Hoekstra, Czech Prime Minister and oligarch Andrej Babis, and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky — that’s about it. USA, Germany, France, Canada, Scandinavia — all clean.

Among the cultural and sports celebrities, the ex-model Claudia Schiffer, the musicians Ringo Starr, Elton John, Julio Iglesias, the Nobel Prize-winning writer Mario Vargas Llosa, and the soccer coach Pep Guardiola (FC Bayern Munich, Manchester City) are all from the colorful pages’ picture book. From the aristocracy, a daughter of Moroccan King Hassan, the royal family of Qatar, and Corinna zu Sayn-Wittgenstein, entrepreneur and playmate of the resigned Spanish scandal king Juan Carlos I. Who would have thought it?

Among the many businessmen mentioned by name, there are similarly picture-perfect ones from Western-connected countries known for messy dealings anyway, such as India, Pakistan, Turkey, Montenegro, Bulgaria, Ukraine, Colombia, the Philippines and the Western-assumed territory of Hong Kong. However, there are also a few lost figures from more important countries: Robert Smith/Vista Equity Partners and Robert Brockman/Reynolds&Reynolds, two donors to the two leading U.S. parties; Alexander Temerko as donor to the British Tories; India’s richest entrepreneur Mazumdar-Shaw; the Israeli multi-billionaire Benny Steinmetz, sentenced to prison for money laundering and bribery; Formula I racing promoter Bernie Ecclestone.

In the margins, the US corporations Apple, Abbott, Nike and RJR Nabisco appear abruptly, also the most important US business law firm BakerMcKenzie (from which ECB chief Christine Lagarde comes), admittedly without naming individuals, without further elaboration and without justification for this tiny selection.

The largest unified group so far consists of 1,892 owners of shell companies from China, including a brother-in-law of head of state Xi Jinping and a daughter of ex-premier Li Peng. The second largest unified group from one state is formed by the dozen Russian businessmen described as “close friends” of President Putin. And one Svetlana Krivonogikh, once presented by german scandal sheet BILD as an “alleged” former mistress of Putin and since 20 years belonging to the jet set in the Principality of Monaco, was now punctually rediscovered by ICIJ investigators, with “alleged” 85 million euros in the mailbox.

All normal, isn’t it? But Putin! And Xi Jinping!

All in all, according to the information so far, the Westerners are involved in personal business deals. For example, Tony Blair and his wife bought a property in London for 7.5 million, as befits their status. Real estate purchases in Great Britain are anyway for a long time a popular object for foreign super-rich. Jordan’s King Abdullah, for example, bought 14 houses here, incidentally also from Crown Estate, the administration of the British royal family. And President Aliyev of Azerbaijan also got hold of as many as 27 properties in the United Kingdom without difficulty. The Czech Republic’s oligarch Babis bought a “mansion” in France. Dutch Finance Minister Hoekstra made do with pea nuts, taking a stake of a good 20,000 euros in a tourism company, together with friends.

All this shows that the use of shell companies is also routine in Europe and the EU. But the leading media evaluation focuses not on the states that tolerate and promote these practices, but on individuals who take advantage of the generous offer. Asebaidjan’s Aliyev is otherwise powerfully denounced as authoritarian and corrupt — but that Britain enabled him to buy 27 properties with the help of shell companies — no criticism.

So people are pilloried who maintain shell companies. But the states and associations of states that promote the supply of shell companies, such as the USA, Great Britain, and by no means least the European Union, are not pilloried. We will come to that in a moment: The names of the Russian and Chinese owners of shell companies are known — but not the owners of the shell companies that are under the protection of BlackRock & Co.

When financial havens are part of the Western legal statehood after all

So far, the leading media portrayal has concentrated on a very special, tiny section: “Close friends of Putin” are the villains in the Pandora production. They use shell companies in financial havens! Financial havens that have been part of the system of US-led Western capitalism for decades.

When Western-friendly Russian oligarch Mikhail Chodorkovsky, owner of the privatized Yukos oil conglomerate, used several Western financial havens with the help of Western advisors, he was praised in the West for his skill and showered with loans and investments. He was convicted of tax evasion in Russia, facts he did not dispute. But the private arbitration court in The Hague, Netherlands, responsible for international financial relations, in 2014 ordered the Russian state to pay 50 billion in damages. By then, financial havens were part of Western rule of law, and no ICIJ investigators found anything wrong with that.

Missing: The most important financial havens

The most frequently mentioned financial havens are Panama, the British Virgin Islands, Belize, the Seychelles, Hong Kong, United Arab Emirates, Cyprus, and Switzerland. They traditionally specialize in hiding individual assets, money laundering and corrupt payments by individuals.

But missing are the financial havens that are central to corporations, banks and today’s leading investors: Right up front is the U.S. state of Delaware: for example, this is where most of the 500 U.S. companies on the Forbes and S&P lists have their legal and tax domiciles. In the EU, the most important financial havens for tax avoidance, lending, license sales of companies are: The states of Ireland, Luxembourg and the Netherlands. In addition, the Cayman Islands (British overseas territory), Singapore and the British Channel Islands of Jersey and Guernsey are the most important.

Incidentally, they are all missing from the “black list” of the ICIJ and also from the financial havens drawn up by the EU, including the most recent one dated 22.2.2021. To demonstrate their ridiculousness, here are these insignificant financial havens branded by the EU: Samoa, Anguilla, Dominica, Fiji, Guam, Palau, Panama, Seychelles, Trinidad&Tobago, Vanuatu.

In the Pandora Papers, 203 U.S. trusts also appear on the margin, domestic U.S. shell companies, so to speak. Most of them, 81, are located in South Dakota, in Florida 37, in Texas 24, in Nevada 14. Such trusts are also assigned to Delaware, 35. They are used by upscale layers of petty criminals. Here, too, the first league of US corporations and Wall Street is missing, which maintain tens of thousands of shell companies in the Cayman Islands, the British Channel Islands and, last but not least, in Ireland, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Cyprus and Malta.

For example: Deutsche Bank in Delaware

The major players are not represented in the insignificant to ridiculous financial havens in which Pandora investigators also dive. The largest location of corporate and banking mailboxes in the world, the U.S. state of Delaware is not mentioned at all in this regard. Nor is the world’s largest capital organizer, BlalckRock, which has its legal and tax headquarters here.

Let’s take an example from Germany: Deutsche Bank — in which BlackRock itself is also one of the leading shareholders — maintains many dozens of shell companies in the main financial havens of Delaware, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and the Cayman Islands.

Deutsche Bank in Delaware:

*Deutsche Bank Capital Finance LLC I
*Deutsche Bank Contingent Capital LLC II
*Deutsche Bank Contingent Capital Trust II

and four other dozens.

In Luxembourg, for example:

*Deutsche Bank Luxembourg S.A. Fiduciary Deposits.
*Deutsche Bank Luxembourg S.A. Fiduciary Note Programme

and four more dozen.

In Ireland, for example:

*Eirles Three Designated Activitiy Company.
*Eirles Two Designated Activity Company

and so on.

Attachment 1 shows an excerpt from Deutsche Bank’s list of shareholdings, last updated 2019. The place Wilmington mentioned therein is the capital of the U.S. state Delaware; Georgetown is the capital of the Cayman Islands.

Missing: Leading capital organizers BlackRock & Co.

Missing from the elaborate Pandora “disclosure” are not only the main financial havens and the companies and banks, but also today’s leading investors, capital organizers and asset managers who own the main Western companies and banks.

Foremost among these today is BlackRock: the largest capital organizer in the U.S.-led Western financial system, with $9 trillion in invested capital, has its legal and tax headquarters in Delaware. BlackRock is currently a co-owner/shareholder of 18,000 companies and banks worldwide, in most of the 500 largest companies and banks in the U.S. (e.g., Amazon, Google, Facebook, Apple, Microsoft, Coca Cola, Goldman Sachs, Tesla, Exxon, Boeing, Lockheed), similarly in the UK, Germany, France, Belgium, Switzerland, etc.

In Germany, BlackRock is among all 6 major shareholders of all 30 DAX corporations, also in the just-mentioned Deutsche Bank, also in the fraud corporation Wirecard, and also in the 5 largest private housing corporations, namely Vonovia, Deutsche Wohnen, LEG, TAG and Grand City Properties. [See Werner Rügemer: The Capitalists of the 21st Century. An Easy-to-Understand Outline on the Rise of the New Financial Players, 308 pages, editing houtse tredition 2020, harcover, paperback, eBook.]

Missing: BlackRock’s wealthy investors

Today’s leading capital organizers and investors like BlackRock, Vanguard, State Street, Blackstone, KKR & Co. get their capital from the super rich, if they have 50 or 100 million idle in one of their accounts, i.e. multi-millionaires and multi-billionaires, corporate foundations, entrepreneurs, top managers, pension funds. And these capital providers of BlackRock & Co are anonymized with the help of letterbox companies, and this capital and the proportionate profits from the 18,000 BlackRock companies and banks then enjoy the protection of the financial havens that are not on the EU blacklist.

That the clients of BlackRock & Co. use letterbox companies by default and are anonymized — this is not even mentioned in the Pandora Papers. And of course, these investors of BlackRock & Co. are then also not mentioned by name in the Pandora Papers — unlike the Russian and Chinese owners of shell companies.

BlackRock’s shell companies in the lignite group RWE

BlackRock is the largest shareholder in the German lignite company RWE, with 3.26 percent of the shares. This share currently represents a value of almost one billion euros. And this amount is distributed among 219 BlackRock subsidiaries/letterboxes, with an average amount of about 4 million euros.

BlackRock Deutschland AG is also one of these 219 companies. Its supervisory board chairman until 2020 was BlackRock’s lobbyist in Germany, Friedrich Merz, who also wanted so much to become CDU chairman, chancellor or at least finance minister and was also supported in this by the business and banking lobby in Germany. Hello ICIJ-investigative journalists: Have you ever pursued the question whether Friedrich Merz has a letter box company, or perhaps even several?

But the vast majority of these 219 companies are shell companies in financial havens and contain the respective invested capital of BlackRocks anonymous investors. The financial havens are not the Seychelles, Belize etc. mentioned by ICIJ and the EU, but they are Delaware, the Cayman Islands, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Singapore.

Attachment 2 shows an excerpt from the list of these RWE-BlackRock shell companies; ticked are the shell companies in financial havens; the name part “Holdco” means: domicile in Delaware. (as of 6.10.2021) The fact that the average value of the shares is “only” 4 million should not come as a surprise: These shell companies belonging to individual investors also appear in numerous other companies and banks, thus uniting a much larger sum in themselves.

Missing: Joe Biden, the patron of Delaware

Oh, in case you didn’t know or forgot again, which can happen very easily nowadays, with this inundation of non-information: With the rise of Delaware to the largest corporate and investor financial oasis on earth also rose a certain Joe Biden, since 2021 president of “America First”.

Biden was a senator for the tiny U.S. state of Delaware from 1973 to 2009. He had already applied for this office as a 29-year-old business lawyer and held it for 35 years. The number of shell companies in Biden’s homeland is at least twice the number of eligible voters. Son Beau Biden became attorney general here without having to try very hard. Son Hunter Biden is an active financial speculator in Ukraine, among other places. When necessary, father Biden stood up for him on the ground in Kiev.

Joe Biden has recently received donations for his election campaigns from major digital companies such as Alphabet/Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Netflix. But Delaware companies also promoted their influential senator, including credit card company MBNA and John Hynansky, who is from Ukraine and dominates the export of premium SUVs to Ukraine.

Biden, as a senator in Washington, always voted with Republicans on major financial sector deregulations. The largest financial oasis also includes an extremely “liberal” corporate constitution (extremely low liability, low disclosure requirements) and a judiciary to go with it.

And the largest company in the financial oasis, BlackRock and longtime lobbyist Joe Biden eventually found themselves quite close: Three top BlackRock executives became members of the Biden administration.

Pandora Papers: Funded by Soros’ Open Society Foundations

Like the similar Panama Papers and Paradise Papers, the Pandora Papers were coordinated by the Washington-based International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, ICIJ. The associated media in the Western countries mainly include media outlets posing as “liberal” such as the New York Times (USA), Guardian and BBC (Great Britain), Asahi Shimbun (Japan) and from Germany the Süddeutsche Zeitung, WDR and NDR.

The sums of millions for the elaborate international research and coordination by the ICIJ come from the Open Society Foundations of the well-known major speculator and U.S. multi-billionaire George Soros. He financed the opening of entire states of Eastern Europe to Western “values” and investors with the help of numerous “colorful revolutions.” Oligarchs like Viktor Orban are his foster children, even if he later falls out with them. And against Putin’s Russia — Soros is always there. Against Putin’s corrupt and often drunken predecessor, Boris Yeltsin, the sellout of Russia, on the other hand, Soros and ICIJ had no objection.

“Enlightenment” in the Service of Counter-Enlightenment and Agitation

The Pandora Papers suggest personal, unclean dealings by the named individuals, such as fraud, money laundering, corruption and the like. This, we know from experience, will be true in many cases.

But the ICIJ investigators avoid making a clear distinction that is communicated in a publicly sustained way: In the case of the Russian and Chinese individuals mentioned, it is admittedly implied that the shell companies serve other purposes. For example, Alibaba, the largest Chinese trading company, organized its IPO in New York through a shell company. This was known to both the U.S. and Chinese sides — there was no other way, and it was because of U.S. rules. And when the Chinese leadership thus strengthens the Chinese national economy and subsequently gives Alibaba a proper regulatory squeeze, as happened, then this is something different from the permanent protection that the US and EU governments and now the ICIJ — “revelations” grant to the super-rich capital providers of BlackRock&Co.

If the Pandora Papers disclosures are followed by prosecutorial investigations,

If the U.S., U.K. and EU governments close their financial havens — most notably Delaware, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Ireland, the Cayman Islands and the English Channel Islands,

Then the prosperity of the nations and the majority populations would already have gained a lot.

But as long as “revelations” in the style of ICIJ turn out like now again the Pandora Papers, then they do not serve the enlightenment, but the counter-enlightenment: Greenwashing of the Western financial system and agitation against Russia and China.

BlackRock Corporation is currently a co-owner or a shareholder, in 18,000 banks, companies, and financial service providers, primarily in the U.S. and Canada, in the European Union, and in Western-oriented nations. Such a numerous simultaneous presence of a single owner has never been seen before in the history of capitalism.

Yet BlackRock is only the tip of the current, newly formed capitalist iceberg. The next largest capital organizers of this new kind are Vanguard, State Street, Capital Group, Amundi, Wellington, Fidelity, T Rowe Price, Pimco, Norges. BlackRock is exemplary for these currently determining players of US-led Western capitalism. Smaller new capital players with related, also hardly regulated business models such as private equity investors (“locusts”), hedge funds, investment banks and venture capitalists are also part of the current phase of the newly formed capitalism at the latest since the banking crisis of 2007 – they here are only briefly referred to. (1)

BlackRock – Rise of the Leading Shadow Bank

BlackRock is the result of a long series of deregulations in the U.S., but also spills over into the entire Western economic, financial, fiscal and governmental system, in Europe mostly through subsidiaries in the City of London.

Headquarters in the largest U.S. financial haven, Delaware

BlackRock does have its operational headquarters in New York and branches in a few dozen states. But the company’s legal headquarter as a corporation is in the U.S. financial oasis of Delaware.

This tiny U.S. state built its position as a leading Western financial haven in the 20th century, initially for U.S. companies: Particularly low taxes on profits, low disclosure requirements, the establishment and management of letterbox companies as a business segment, and extremely “liberal” corporate law: liability and transparency are particularly limited, for example, compared to a classic stock corporation. Since the 1920s, the U.S. corporation DuPont (pharmaceuticals, armaments, auto supply) has been at the forefront of this development: It had and still has its legal domicile there and thus evaded public control and tax payments even during its worldwide expansion; it also cooperated, for example, with the German pharmaceutical cartel IG Farben during the Nazi era. These capitalist freedoms have also been used for decades by most multinational corporations and banks, not only located in the USA, but also from the EU, Asia (especially Hong Kong), Latin America, also for hundreds of subsidiaries each.

The EU has recognized the legality of this corporate law on its territory. The Federal Republic of Germany, which was founded after World War II at the instigation of the U.S., recognized already in the German-American Friendship Treaty of 1954 under its founding chancellor Konrad Adenauer that U.S. companies could operate in the Federal Republic under the laws of the financial haven of Delaware. (2)

Deregulation since U.S. President William Clinton

Freedoms under Delaware law have been continuously expanded and have become significant beyond the U.S. on a large scale globally since the beginning of the 21st century.

In the 1980s, Wall Street bankers began new financial products and practices, which were then legalized under the presidency of “Democrat” William Clinton. For example, at Bank First Boston during the 1980s, Laurence Fink, who later founded BlackRock, made it a business model to bundle and sell individual hypoptheque loans (for the purchase of condominiums and homes) to banks and turn them into tradable securities. Fink first practiced this in one of the equally deregulated new financial players, the private equity firm Blackstone. In 1988, he went independent from Blackstone with Blackrock (written much later as BlackRock): The small black stone became the great black rock. (3)

Blackrock & Co were not and are not subject to the old banking regulations, renewed after the 2008 financial crisis. U.S. President Obama even made BlackRock the advisor for the resolution of the financial crisis: as advisor to the U.S. Federal Reserve, Blackrock helped decide the fate of insolvent banks, insurance companies and corporations: Who would be rescued, who would not? In the process, BlackRock’s own business scale skyrocketed.

The EU followed suit, and BlackRock has also been an advisor to the ECB since the head of the European Central Bank, Mario Draghi (until 2020), came from Goldman Sachs. In 2020, BlackRock also got a consulting contract with the European Commission for ESG (Environment, Social, Governance). (4)

BlackRock: Largest “shadow bank”

BlackRock & Co are not considered banks under corporate law, despite many bank-like operations. The World Bank, the central banks and the G7 countries still officially regard BlackRock and Co as “shadow banks”. To this day, they remain unregulated “under observation” in the central bank of central banks, the Bank for International Settlements (BIS, headquartered in Basel/Switzerland), which is dominated by the Federal Reserve Bank. (5) Through their lobby, BlackRock & Co have achieved that Western governments keep postponing regulation. (6)

The basis of capital power: The Super-Rich and the U.S. location

BlackRock & Co obtain their capital base through the capital they raise from entrepreneurs, corporate foundations, banks, insurance companies, pension funds. An increasingly important group of capital providers is the number of super-rich, multi-millionaires and multi-billionaires, which is growing by leaps and bounds with deregulation: They are known as High Net Worth Individuals (HNWI) and Ultra High Net Worth Individuals (UHNWI).

BlackRock commands more than $8 trillion in 2021, earning itself in fees, commissions, and its own trades, but essentially acting as the legal representative and manager of the capital providers. To all of them, BlackRock also guarantees higher annual returns than previous asset managers, traditional banks, and corporations because of its greater freedoms.

BlackRock under the US administrations since William Clinton

Wall Street and the new capital organizers supported the Democratic Party by majority in the USA since the 1990s because they had become powerful through its deregulations. That’s why BlackRock CEO Fink was in the conversation to be Treasury Secretary under presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. He had brought Obama administration staffers to BlackRock.

But when anti-Wall Street Republican Donald Trump won the 2016 election, cutting taxes on corporations while promising them higher government subsidies, Fink declared: “Trump is good for America. ” (7)

U.S. President Joe Biden, in office since 2021, has appointed several high-ranking BlackRock executives to his administration. So Brian Deese: The head of BlackRock’s global sustainable investing division will be the president’s chief economist. Wally Adeyemo has served as U.S. President Obama’s chief advisor on international economic relations, then joined BlackRock as Fink’s chancery chief, and has been president of the Obama Foundation since 2014; now he is deputy Treasury secretary under Biden. Michael Pyle was in charge of International Financial Relations at the Treasury Department under Obama. Then he became head of global investment strategy at BlackRock, now he is chief economist for Vice President Kamala Harris.

Biden himself was a senator for the state of Delaware from 1973 to 2009. He helped build Delaware into the world’s most important corporate financial haven – and thus a tool for BlackRock & Co. So BlackRock is more than ever active part of „America First“.

The new power of the invisible capitalists

BlackRock & Co have also replaced the traditional big banks at latest since the financial crisis of 2008: the unregulated shadow banks are now the owners of even the regulated big banks, but also of, for example, all the big digital corporations such as Amazon, Google, Apple, Microsoft and Facebook. At the same time, BlackRock & Co have managed to remain virtually unknown to the general public.

BlackRock combines the following characteristics and practices:

*Ultraliberal corporate constitution under the laws of the financial haven of Delaware

*Status as an unregulated “shadow bank”

*the unique volume of capital employed, currently $8 trillion

*the unique insider and monopoly position as a simultaneous major shareholder in 18,000 corporations, banks, financial service providers

*the advisory function with important governments, with the US National Bank Federal Reserve, with the ECB and with the European Commission

*with ALADDIN, the largest collection and analysis system in the Western world for financial, economic and political data

*a system of paid influence agents in key countries such as the U.S., Germany, the U.K., France, Mexico, Switzerland

*Integration with “America First” political, media, legal, rating, consulting, intelligence and military systems. For example, BlackRock is a shareholder in the leading Western liberal media outlet, the New York Times.

It is this combination that creates power. From this it becomes clear that in capitalism it is not enough for the exercise of power to simply be rich or super-rich, multimillionaire or multibillionaire. Rather, it is the multiple presence in companies, banks, financial institutions, governments, leading media and the multiform systemic multiple networking that is decisive.

Simultaneous Multiple Ownership: Example Wirecard

It is often claimed in “critical” circles that BlackRock & Co. cannot have such a large influence because they only ever own 3 or 5 or at most 10 percent of the shares. This was also the argument of BlackRock’s former chief lobbyist in Germany, the CDU politician Friedrich Merz.

But BlackRock is intertwined with the next dozen similar capital organizers through cross-ownership and consults for decisions in the joint enterprises, such as before shareholder meetings: To coordinate voting, the Big Three in particular, BlackRock, Vanguard, and State Street, often hire the financial agencies Institutional Shareholder Services (ISS) and Glass Lewis.

And there is the multiple ownership around one company where BlackRock & Co are the determining shareholders. Let’s take the fraud company Wirecard, which is currently the subject of scandal in Germany. Members of the Bundestag and leading state and private media are fiercely denouncing Finance Minister Scholz, the financial regulator Bafin and the auditors Ernst&Young (EY) for failing to uncover the multi-billion dollar fraud perpetrated by this financial services provider over many years.

But no one asks: who are actually the owners of Wirecard? That’s right, BlackRock was a shareholder for the longest time with 5 percent, making it the third largest shareholder. But BlackRock is at the same time much more:

*BlackRock is shareholder in Wirecard’s other major shareholders, e.g. Goldman Sachs,

*BlackRock is shareholder in Wirecard’s largest lenders, Commerzbank, Société Générale, and Deutsche Bank,

*and Blackrock is shareholder in the rating agency Moody’s, which determined Wirecard’s creditworthiness and credit terms. (8)

This de facto multiple presence of BlackRock & Co is as important to the functioning of contemporary capitalism as their public obscurity.

Network of Influential Agents

BlackRock maintains paid agents of influence in all major states: These are leading people from governments, political parties, corporations, central and other banks. These individuals receive high-paying consulting contracts and seats on boards of companies in which BlackRock is a major shareholder.

Laurence Fink, BlackRock’s chief executive, acts (or acted) as an influence agent himself:

*Member of U.S. President Donald Trump’s Business Council

*Director in the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR)

*Presenter at the World Economic Forum

*Meets heads of state, government and corporations in person

*Lobby office in Washington, donor to both U.S. political parties

*Lobby office in Brussels.

Friedrich Merz, ex-faction leader of the CDU in the Bundestag: partner in the U.S. business law firm Mayer Brown, until 2020 chairman of the supervisory board of BlackRock Deutschland AG.

Michael Rüdiger, ex-head of Dekabank Deutsche Girozentrale, on the Supervisory Board of Deutsche Börse AG: successor to Merz at BlackRock Deutschland AG.

Hildegard Müller, President of the German Association of the Automotive Industry, on the Executive Board of the CDU Economic Council and the Central Committee of German Catholics: Member of the supervisory board of the largest housing company in Germany, Vonovia where BlackRock is a major shareholder.

Cherryl Mills, ex-chief of staff to Hillary Clinton at the State Department: member of the supervisory board of BlackRock.

George Osborne, ex-finance minister in the British Tory government, editor of The Evening Standard newspaper: BlackRock advisor with a 650,000-pound-a-year contract.

Philipp Hildebrand, ex-president of the Swiss National Bank: head of BlackRock’s European headquarters in London.

Jean-Francois Cirelli, ex-chief executive of France’s largest energy companies GDF/Suez/Engie: head of BlackRock France.

Marco Antonio Slim Domit, son of the richest Mexican, Carlos Slim: member of BlackRock’s supervisory board.

How does BlackRock generate the super profits?

Through its position of power, BlackRock generates higher profits than traditional companies, banks, and asset managers in Western capitalism. (9)

New Monopolies and Oligopolies

BlackRock & Co are the controlling shareholders in the most important companies in the same industries, i.e., simultaneously in the most important banks, the most important pharmaceutical, oil, agribusiness, automotive, logistics, airline, defense, and digital corporations, both throughout the capitalist West and in each of the most important individual states, such as in the United States, Germany, France, Great Britain, and Switzerland.

On the one hand, this means a new kind of monopoly formation, for example when BlackRock, Vanguard, State Street & Co are at the same time, in changing composition, the new major shareholders of the most important Wall Street banks, for example in Germany at the same time major shareholders of the two largest banks, i.e. Deutsche Bank and Commerzbank. Or like this: BlackRock & Co are, again in changing composition, at the same time determining shareholders in the 30 DAX corporations of Germany, in the 40 CAC corporations of France and in the 500 S&P corporations of the USA. This type of monopoly formation is not covered by any of the outdated antitrust laws of Western countries.

Mergers and acquisitions

Another form of monopoly or oligopoly formation is mergers and acquisitions. BlackRock & Co can do this all the more easily because they are at the same time co-owners in the most important companies in the same industry, both nationally and internationally.

For example, BlackRock & Co are the major shareholders of the two chemical companies Bayer in Germany and Monsanto in the USA. Bayer’s largest shareholders during the 2016 – 2020 Monsanto takeover were, in this order: BlackRock, Sun Life Financial, Capital World, Vanguard, Deutsche Bank. Monsanto’s largest shareholders were, in slightly different order: Capital World, Vanguard, BlackRock, State Street, Fidelity, Sun Life Financial. At the same time, BlackRock is also a shareholder of Deutsche Bank.

This is how the world’s largest agrochemical group came into being: it combines market leadership in seeds, pesticides, agricultural patents and global data on farmers, agricultural companies and agricultural markets. And, of course, BlackRock & Co are also major shareholders in other agricultural and chemical companies such as BASF, LG Chem (South Korea), Akzo Nobel (Netherlands), and Pfizer and DowDupont (USA).

Digitization

BlackRock & Co are the determining shareholders of the large digital corporations Google, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, Facebook and many others as soon as they stabilize their success. This also applies to such corporations as those in the automotive and logistics sectors that are developing self-driving cars, trucks and delivery drones with artificial intelligence, including Tesla, for example. Of course, this also applies to defense corporations.

The management of the Corona pandemic by Western governments has further spurred the expansion of digital corporations by leaps and bounds, not least through government contracts for healthcare, public administration and government communications. BlackRock & Co are the first to benefit from this.

Robotized speculation

Digitization with the help of artificial intelligence is also taking hold in finance. BlackRock & Co do not wait anxiously like traditional shareholders for the dividend decided and paid out at the end of the year. They take that too, but the much more lucrative business is the speculation with the shares that runs throughout the year. Every movement in the value of the stock – up or down – is used for speculation.

The advantage that BlackRock is the biggest insider in the Western economy is increased by its subsidiary ALADDIN (Asset Liability and Debt Derivative Investment Network): This is the biggest collection and exploitation facility for financial, economic and political data. In the nano-second range, the values of all shares and other securities on all stock exchanges in the world are simultaneously recorded, compared with each other and evaluated, bought, sold in a largely robotized manner. Through additional purchases and sales, reinforced by loan shares, upward and downward movements of securities can be accelerated and used for speculation – faster and more profitably than by competitors and small speculators. If, for example, a stock constantly rises and falls due to scandals, as in the case of Wirecard, or in the case of a merger that drags on for years, as in the case of Bayer/Monsanto – then this is the ideal, profit-generating business area for BlackRock.

If national reporting laws are violated in the process – in Germany, for example, the Securities Trading Act – then financial regulators such as Bafin are not in a position, either technologically or in terms of personnel, to exercise the necessary control. (10)

Aiding and abetting global tax evasion

Part of the higher return for capital providers is BlackRock’s organized tax evasion for the benefit of its wealthy capital providers, the HNWIs and UHNWIs. For example, the 5 percent of shares in the lignite company RWE represented by BlackRock are distributed among 154 shell companies in a dozen financial havens between Delaware, the Cayman Islands and Luxembourg. The shell companies bear names such as BlackRock Holdco 6 LLC. In this way, the actual beneficial owners, the super-rich investors, are anonymized and made to disappear in front of financial and stock exchange supervisory authorities, tax offices, employees and the public: organized irresponsibility. (11)

In addition, this further impoverishes the affected states, the public infrastructure decays, private infrastructures, on the other hand, are expanded.

Low wages, union hatred, rents, privatized pensions

BlackRock, as a simultaneous shareholder of the five largest housing corporations in Germany – Vonovia, Deutsche Wohnen, LEG, Grand City Properties, TAG – promotes excessive increases in rents and utility costs.

BlackRock profits from low-wage labor in national and global supply chains – at Amazon and Apple as well as at Tesla, promotes precarious working conditions also in the housing management subsidiaries of the housing corporations controlled by BlackRock&Co.

BlackRock lobbies the EU and governments through its influence agents for privatized pensions – also tax-subsidized, of course – with the help of the financial product ETF (Exchanged Traded Funds), a kind of “people’s share” in which BlackRock leads the world market ahead of Vanguard. (12)

Environmental destruction, armament and new wars

BlackRock is a shareholder in the major coal, lignite, oil, pharmaceutical, agribusiness, and automobile corporations in the United States and the European Union. BlackRock’s high profit withdrawals thus also prevent the necessary innovations in transport, energy and the environment and endanger the survival of mankind. Newly launched environmental funds are only an addition of comparatively very small size, while disproportionately larger ownership stakes in fossil fuel corporations continue to be held.

BlackRock, Vanguard & Co are also the largest shareholders in the leading defense corporations – including those involved in nuclear bomb production – in the U.S. and EU: Boeing, Lockheed, Northrop, General Dynamics, Raytheon (U.S.), BAE (UK), Rheinmetall (Germany), Leonardo (Italy) and others. BlackRock & Co use rearmament, military interventions and wars by the US and EU states as a source of profit and increase the global threat of war.

Practices include circumventing export restrictions currently in the wars in Yemen and Libya, for example, by supplying warring parties such as Saudi Arabia. BlackRock has not withdrawn from any of the aforementioned groups.

Corona pandemic: accelerated build-up of private world power

BlackRock CEO Fink has been the acknowledged spokesman at the World Economic Forum (Davos) since several years for the “renewal” of capitalism, particularly in environmental and climate matters (Great Reset of Capitalism).

Fink notes correctly that the governments of the West are increasingly failing to meet the expectations of their populations. As an alternative, however, Fink & Co are concerned not with democratizing states, such as collecting taxes, fostering labor incomes in accordance with human rights, and expanding public infrastructure.

Rather, Fink said as a star speaker at the World Economic Forum: The alternative is to build a new private power structure, with multinational private companies and private foundations at its core. The “Corona” measures are intended to serve as an accelerant. “Neoliberalism has had its day,” writes World Economic Forum founder Klaus Schwab, but revolutions and uprisings are to be prevented. (13)

Current international law, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights including social and labor rights, the UN majority decision to ban nuclear weapons, the UN conventions, for example, on the rights of refugees, children and migrant workers, and on the sanctioned responsibility of companies in global supply and production chains (Binding Treaty) – Fink, Schwab & Co do not mention any of these in their new canon of values.

A greened new capitalism is supposed to whitewash all violations of international law, human rights and democracy: Greenwashing. Current governments and international institutions like the World Bank, the UN and the European Commission are supposed to assist in this. (14) BlackRock also advises the Federal Reserve Bank and the European Central Bank on their trillion dollar/euro Corona recovery programs.

BlackRock & Co want a renewed green capitalism. Many new funds are being launched for this purpose. However, they are comparatively small in scale. In essence, BlackRock & Co continue to be the controlling owners of fossil capitalism, i.e., the oil, mining, automobile, pharmaceutical, and defense corporations that maintain a global, deep-pocketed network of subcontractors and persistently violate human rights with impunity. Tax evasion, shrinking of national economies, prevention of necessary innovations for the environment and mass-serving infrastructure, impoverishment of states, and last but not least: dwindling political approval of the majority of the population for the complicit governments and previous governing parties: Fossil capitalism in more ways than one.

China wins system comparison, the West arms up

Poverty in the colonies, in the neocolonially exploited regions of Africa and Latin America, and increasingly also of their own populations, including the middle classes of the rich metropolises – the old Western capital democracies have long put up with this, most brutally and for the longest time in the leading Western state, the United States.

But with the People’s Republic of China, an alternative has emerged in just a few decades: Now the world’s largest economy, it has brought many millions of feudally, colonially and capitalistically impoverished people into sustainable upward development, in contrast to the capitalist West and the developing countries dependent on it, such as India and Brazil. In China, labor incomes of the majority and the middle class have been rising sustainably for at least three decades, the number of socially insured people has been increasing (labor, health, pensions), and the infrastructure for housing, new cities, ground-based mass transportation, free education has been expanded.

To this domestic development comes the alternative, namely inclusive globalization: on all continents, even for instance in a growing number of states of the European Union, the approval for the multiple investments of the New Silk Road is growing. This kind of globalization goes, and this is a very important difference, with respect for international law: without military accompaniment, without a global ring of military bases, without capital ships constantly patrolling off distant coasts, without covert or overt military intervention.

Last but not least, the fight against the Corona pandemic showed: China is winning the systems competition. In contrast, the economically, technologically and politically declining U.S.-led West – at least so far – sees armament against China and its most important cooperation partners, Russia and Iran, as the main way out. (15)

At the same time, BlackRock & Co continue their efforts to acquire stakes in China’s leading companies and to obtain licenses for financial operations in China. In doing so, they accept government regulations that they fight against in the West. The battle of the systems is multifaceted and by no means decided.

Notes

(1) On typology, practices and consequences, see Werner Rügemer: The Capitalists of the 21st Century. An Easy-to-Understand Outline on the Rise of the New Financial Players, 308 pages, tredition Hamburg 2019
(2) German-American Treaty of Friendship October 29, 1954; confirmed by judgement of the german Federal Court of Justice january 29, 2003 VIII 155/02
(3) On the history of the deregulations in the U.S. and the founding of BlackRock, see Rügemer: The Capitalists of the 21st Century p. 24 ff.
(4) New Order from Brussels: Will BlackRock soon determine EU climate policy? Deutsche Wirtschaftsnachrichten May 5, 2020
(5) Adam Lebor: The Tower of Basel. The Shadowy History of the Secret Bank that Runs the World. New York 2013, p. 252 ff.
(6) International Monetary Fund: What’s Shadow Banking? Many financial institutions that act like banks are not supervised like banks, in: Finance and Development June 2013, p. 42 f.
(7) BlackRock chief Larry Fink praises Trump tax cuts, bbc.com/news/av/business-42830383, January 26, 2018
(8) Werner Rügemer: Betrugsunternehmen Wirecard am Pranger – wo aber bleibt BlackRock? www.nachdenkseiten.de September 4, 2020 (Fraud Company Wirecard – but where is BlackRock?)
(9) For special references see the indictment, the testimonies of the witnesses and experts and the verdict at the Tribunal against BlackRock in Berlin on September 26-27, 2020; www.blackrocktribunal.de
(10) See Rügemer: The Capitalists of the 21st Century p. 16 ff.
(11) See Rügemer: The Capitalists of the 21st Century p. 28 f.
(12) George Osborne to earn 650.000 at BlackRock for 4 days a month, Financial Times March 8, 2017
(13) Klaus Schwab is founder and organizer of the World Economic Forum; Malleret founded the asset management company IJ for capital investment of UNHWI (starting from about 100 million per person)
(14) For the alternatives and counter-mouvements oriented to international law and human rights, see www.blackrocktribunal.de
(15) See the preface to the 3rd german edition of Werner Rügemer: Die Kapitalisten des 21. Jahrhunderts, Köln 2021

But some attendees of Bilderberg Club meetings represent organizations whose names mean little to the public. But that’s not because those organizations are less influential than Goldman Sachs, HSBC, or Royal Dutch Shell. On the contrary, their impact is often even greater, although they avoid the limelight. And that’s true, not only during meetings of the club, but also in everyday life. Organizations like this are rightly known for working «behind the scenes».

In particular, Philipp Hildebrand, a vice chairman at BlackRock, made his appearance as one of the 140 participants at the meeting in Austria. Philipp Hildebrand is a man «widely known in narrow circles». A glance at his track record shows that in the past he has held positions such as IMF director for Switzerland, chairman of the Governing Board of the Swiss National Bank (SNB), director of the Bank for International Settlements (BIS), and so on. And now he is a vice chairman at this little-known organization called BlackRock. But I would suggest that Blackrock’s influence is every bit as significant as JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs, and Morgan Stanley put together. In the past I have written that BlackRock is one of the Big Four – a group of huge financial holding companies that control many sectors of the economy in the US and abroad. Other members of the Big Four also include: the Vanguard Group; State Street Corporation; and FMR Corporation (Fidelity). Here is a brief sketch of BlackRock.

The company’s very name, «black rock», is probably intended to convey an image of strength and solidity. In a recent article titled «The Wars of Wall Street» (May 13, 2015), Russian strategic analyst Elena Larina wrote: «…behind every well-known bank on Wall Street stand even more powerful and unregulated institutions. Those are asset management companies. The biggest and most mysterious of them is the BlackRock corporation headed by Larry Fink. Currently it manages assets – the vast majority of which are stocks – worth more than $4.5 trillion. Just one figure – $36.5 trillion – gives an idea of the extent of the firm’s predominance, and that number is slightly less than the capitalization of this company that is included in the S&P 500, meaning that BlackRock controls a significant part of corporate America».

BlackRock (BR) is an international investment company headquartered in New York (USA). At the end of 2013 it had $4.57 trillion in assets under management. By mid-2014, those assets had grown to $4.77 trillion. Some experts believe that BlackRock controls more assets than any of the other Big Four firms.

BlackRock is the youngest of the Big Four, founded in 1988. It has literally only been in the market for a quarter century, but has soared to heights beyond the reach of other companies. The company has a global presence, with 21 investment centers and 70 offices in 30 countries and with clients in 100 countries.

And unlike the family-owned FMR, BlackRock is a public corporation with shares traded on the stock exchange. The principal owners of BR, if one can trust Wikipedia, are Bank of America (34.1 %), PNC Financial Services (24.6 %), and Barclays PLC (19.9 %). But that information is likely out of date. NASDAQ claims that as of Dec. 31, 2014, BR’s biggest shareholders (share capital, %) were: PNC Financial Services – 20.98; Norges Bank Investment Management – 7.15; Wellington Management Co. – 6.38; FMR – 4.16; Vanguard – 3.89; State Street – 3.43; and BlackRock Institutional Trust Company (BRITC) – 1.98. In additional to institutional investors, mutual funds also hold shares of BlackRock, as is typical. Almost every member of the pantheon of the Big Four is included in the top ten of these funds (six from the coterie of Vanguard, two from FMR, and another two have to be looked at separately).

The biggest institutional shareholder is PNC Financial Services – an American financial company with $345 billion in assets at the end of 2014 and headquartered in Pittsburgh. But when we look at who owns PNC Financial Services, it appears that its five largest institutional investors include three of the Big Four. That would be Vanguard, State Street, and BlackRock Institutional Trust Company (BRITC). The last of these companies is a division of BlackRock – part of its empire.

And the third largest institutional investor – Wellington Management Co. – is very closely linked to another member of the Big Four, the financial company Vanguard. Perhaps the only one of BR’s institutional investors that is relatively independent of the Big Four is the company Norges Bank Investment Management – a specialized division of the Norwegian central bank, which is responsible for investing the Pension Fund of Norway in the financial markets.

Individual shareholders, primarily those who serve as the company’s senior managers, also invest in BlackRock. The five biggest individual investors own shares equal to 1.16% of the company’s capital (as of April 2015).6 The key figures in BlackRock’s management are: Laurence D. Fink – founder, chairman, and CEO; Robert S. Kapito – founder and co-president; Charles Hallac – co-president; and Susan Wagner – founder and member of the board of directors.

It is worth noting that BlackRock has the smallest staff of any of the Big Four companies – numbering only 11,500 (in 2013). That works out to over $400 million in managed assets per BlackRock employee. That figure is beyond the reach of other companies and organizations in the American financial sector.

Like the other Big Four companies, BlackRock owns a capital stake in the leading banks on Wall Street. But the company also has an appetite for European banks. In December 2009, BlackRock purchased Barclays Global Investors for $13.5 billion. As we see, BlackRock has a very intimate relationship with Barclays bank. That bank, by the way, took first place in a ranking created by the Institute of Technology in Zurich. The Rothschild-led Barclays Bank also held some staggering positions during the global financial crisis.

Suffice it to say that in 2007, Barclays was the biggest institutional investor in some key Wall Street banks, such as Bank of America, JP Morgan Chase, Citigroup, and Bank of New York Mellon. Plus, Barclays was the second largest institutional investor in the US bank Wells Fargo. Incidentally, Barclays also held strong positions in many non-US banks. It is worth noting that BlackRock was as a major shareholder in those same banks as well (although not as significant a figure as Barclays). It could also be seen that BlackRock and Barclays seemed to work in tandem, but their codependence was not easy to establish.

It can be difficult to figure out which end is the dog and which end is her tail and who is controlling whom. Is Barclays directing BlackRock or is BlackRock running the bank? But most experts are inclined to believe that it is BlackRock that is dominating the famous Barclays bank, which has always been associated with the Rothschild family. Therefore, a correction can be made to the Swiss rankings, in order to take into account BlackRock’s purchase of Barclays. The Swiss list of top ten companies did not previously include BlackRock, but now it can be added with confidence. If BlackRock assumes Barclays’ place, that will put it right at the top. The company is very influential, publishing the credit ratings of countries all over the world. According to its January 2013 rating, the most creditworthy country is Norway, followed by Singapore, Switzerland, Sweden, and Finland. BlackRock awarded the United States only 15th place.

Of course BlackRock’s interests are not limited to banks. It buys shares in a wide spectrum of industries in different parts of the world. We have talked about how Fidelity owns a 7% stake in the world-famous company Google. And the second largest investor is BlackRock with 5.7%. NASDAQ provides information about the investment activity of several major divisions within the BlackRock financial holding company: BlackRock Group Ltd. (BRG), BlackRock Institutional Trust Company (BRITC); and BlackRock Fund Advisors (BRFA). See table 1.

Table 1.

The investment activities of BlackRock’s financial holding company (as of Dec. 31, 2014)

Source:  nasdaq.com; nasdaq.com; nasdaq.com.

Let’s take a closer look at BlackRock’s investment priorities based on the example of one of its divisions, BlackRock Fund Advisors (BRFA). These are the first ten positions in BRFA’s investment portfolio (the value of a block of shares as of Dec. 31, 2014 in billions of US dollars): Apple Inc. – 9.26; Microsoft – 5.03; Exxon Mobil – 4.91; Johnson & Johnson – 3.44; General Electric – 3.31; Chevron Corp – 3.11; Wells Fargo – 2.94; Pfizer Inc – 2.91; Berkshire Harthaway Inc – 2.89; and JP Morgan Chase – 2.75.

Here’s a guide to BlackRock’s investments in US banks (table 2). As we see, the financial holding company is involved with all of the Big Six Wall Street banks.

Table 2.

BlackRock’s investments in the Big Six US banks (in billions of US dollars; as of Dec. 31, 2014)

Source: nasdaq.com; nasdaq.com; nasdaq.com. .

And so, many banks and companies that are represented at the annual meetings of the Bilderberg Club, are, to a greater or lesser extent, dependent on BlackRock. If Philipp Hildebrand spoke at the current conference, then I am sure the other attendees listened to him with particular attention and respect. For this reason, one of the best-informed people in the world, former Fed chairman Paul Volcker, once called BlackRock the most powerful financial corporation in the world.