Do you know who actually owns Blackrock?
And why donβt they have anyone on the board? π€ https://t.co/EfaEB8MO1O
Video Transcript AI Summary
BlackRock, one of the top shareholders of many corporations, is actually controlled by Merrill Lynch, which owns 45% of BlackRock. Merrill Lynch, in turn, is a division of Bank of America, with Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway being the top shareholder of Bank of America. However, it is strange that neither Merrill Lynch nor Bank of America have representatives on BlackRock's board of directors, despite owning a significant portion of the company. The origins of Bank of America can be traced back to an Italian man named Amadeo Giannini. The speaker is curious about the lack of representation and invites further information or insights on the matter.
Speaker 0: So I found out who actually owns BlackRock, but there's something really weird about it. Because by now we know that BlackRock is in the top 3 shareholders of basically every corporation in America and beyond. And they do this using our money and things like retirement accounts, pension funds, IRAs, chain traded funds, mutual funds, but most people don't actually know who owns and controls BlackRock. We all know that it was founded by Larry Fink, and he's the face of the company, but he does not control it. When you try to find out who does control it, you'll usually find this list, which is the top institutional shareholders.
Vanguard, BlackRock, and State Street are right at the top just like every other company. But this is not the whole story. Because if you dig deep enough, you'll find out that actually Merrill Lynch owns 45% of BlackRock, and they're considered an insider. So they don't show up on the top institutional holders list. This merger took place in 2,006.
So actually Merrill Lynch controls BlackRock in a big way. But who controls Merrill Lynch? Well, Merrill Lynch is actually a division of Bank of America because Bank of America bought them out during the o eight financial collapse. So who owns Bank of America? Well, nowadays, Warren Buffett is the top shareholder of Bank of America because he owns Berkshire Hathaway, which is his billionaire investment firm.
I'm still not sure what this top one is, the 25%. That's an anomaly, and I cannot corroborate what those shares are, but I found these shares. This is a screenshot from Berkshire Hathaway's 13 f where they tell you all the things they hold. And I totaled up all of these Bank of America shares, and it equals 1,000,000,000,032,000 shares. That's 13% of Bank of America shares equal to $33,000,000,000 But I also dug in a little bit into where Bank of America came from and who founded them.
And All modern banks are crazy histories of mergers and acquisitions and banks changing their names and merging with other banks probably for no particular reason. But Bank of America traces its roots back in 2 different directions. One of which we're not gonna talk about, and the other one is back to this Italian dude named our Amadeo Giannini, who acquired what was then called Banca de America d'Italia. Sorry for that accent. Over the years, it changed its name to Bank of America.
And then in the biggest merger in history, merge with Charlotte based Nation Bank in 1990 what? 1998. So I just thought it was interesting that half of the lineage of Bank of America was founded by this Italian dude that got really into tally in banking back in the early 1900, you know, when like there was a certain Italian organization that was doing a lot of things with money back then. I'm sure it was all above board though. I'm, you know, like, obviously.
But anyways, back to the weird thing that I can't figure out. Bank of America owns Merrill Lynch, who owns the vast majority of BlackRock. But they don't have anyone on the board as far as I can tell. Usually, the biggest shareholders of a company have representatives on the board that sort of represent their investment. But I've just shown you the whole board of directors of BlackRock, and none of them have any real ties to Merrill Lynch or Bank of America, which seems pretty weird when you own almost half the company to not have any board members.
The plot thickens. So two things. If you wanna follow the history of Bank of America down the other trail, you might wind up at a certain family name that you aren't aware of, that is really hard to find on the Internet. That'll probably get videos taken down. Total conspiracy theories.
And the other thing is if anyone knows more than me or is literate in this or has info about why Merrill Lynch and Bank of America have no representatives on the board of BlackRock. I would love to know. After all, why would you own half of a company and then have no say in what that company is doing? Or how do they have us? And what what's the story here?
