The 2015 Tech 50: Robert Goldstein

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< The 2015 Tech 50: Racers to the Edge

5
Robert Goldstein
Chief Operating Officer
BlackRock
Last year: 6

Robert Goldstein has been COO of BlackRock since July 2014. At the same time, he remains global head of BlackRock Solutions, the technology arm of the money management colossus, which as of March 31 had $4.8 trillion in assets. Goldstein was with that risk-focused systems business at its launch in 1999, five years after he joined the New York–based firm with an economics degree from Binghamton University, and has led it since 2009. Last year the unit generated $635 million in revenue, 10 percent more than in 2013 (whereas BlackRock’s revenue as a whole rose 9 percent, to $11.1 billion). Yet for futuristic insights, this 41-year-old leader among financial technology luminaries observes his 12- and 13-year-old children and their comfort level with programs like Google Docs, designed for simultaneous collaboration by teams of users. “In the workplace five people don’t work on one document at once — I work on it tonight, I e-mail it to you, and so on,” he says. The contrast tells him that “the next generation will think differently about how existing technology winds up being used and will think differently about investing, servicing clients, communicating and managing.” Changing technologies and behaviors are very much here-and-now issues for Goldstein. Big data, for one, is “beyond anything we’ve seen, and it’s going to continue to get bigger,” he says. “It will create a different expectation for what it means to do your job. Being a data scientist will wind up being part of everyone’s job.” In the immediate quest to improve fixed-income liquidity, BlackRock Solutions’ buy-side customer base leverages its Aladdin network to achieve greater transparency across multiple venues.

See the full story, “The 2015 Tech 50: Racers to the Edge.”

The 2015 Tech 50