BlackRock enters India through JV with Ambani’s new financial arm Jio Financial Services

economictimes.indiatimes.com:

BlackRock Inc., the world’s largest asset manager, is looking to join forces with India’s largest company Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL) in what could be a return to the country after exiting in 2018. The US-based investment giant is in active discussions with Jio Financial Services (JFS) to create an asset management business, said three people aware of the matter. JFS is the recently spun-off fintech arm of Mukesh Ambani’s flagship.

BlackRock handles about $11 trillion or 7% of all global financial assets. If successful, this would mark an India comeback for Wall Street’s green crusader Larry Fink, chairman of Blackrock, after parting ways with long-time partner Hemendra Kothari of DSP. Both sides are negotiating to invest $250 million each to start the venture and capitalise it further in future.

The funding details are still getting finalised. BlackRock’s digital platform Aladdin—the Asset, Liability, and Debt and Derivative Investment Network--fits into Ambani’s plan of using data and technology to disrupt the Indian financial markets. The top leadership at both companies have met to hammer out the broad structure of the alliance, said the people cited above.

Much like Amazon that commercialised its cloud platform after using it for captive purposes, BlackRock developed the Aladdin portfolio management system for its own holdings. It was then sold to clients as a software as a service to manage risk, move money across asset classes and analyse consumer data, besides tracking fund performance and changing portfolio values. BlackRock’s global spokesperson didn’t respond to queries sent Tuesday.