Posted on 09/17/2020 12:58:00 PM PDT by nickcarraway
The coronavirus will likely leave a permanent mark on the world’s largest asset management company, and CEO Larry Fink isn’t thrilled about it.
“I don’t believe BlackRock will be ever 100 percent back in office,” the New York company’s billionaire chairman and chief executive revealed on Thursday. “I actually believe maybe 60 percent or 70 percent, and maybe that is a rotation.”
Fink, made the remarks during a virtual appearance at the Morningstar Investment Conference on Thursday morning. And while he was blunt about the realities of a post-COVID workplace, he warned that having more than a quarter of his employees managing the firm’s $7.4 trillion in assets from their basements and bedrooms could have a deleterious effect on the company, headquartered in midtown Manhattan.
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
Larry Fink must have NYC property and isn’t happy seeing his real estate value going down the drain.
Undoubtedly, many of his firms $7.4 trillion in assets are major pieces of real estate, probably in Manhattan and in other major cities as well. The value of multi-story office buildings in Manhattan; some with Gucci and Ferragamo and Old Navy and Hilfiger on the ground floors, paying $100K a month rent....all closed down....becomes entirely questionable with people set up in their offices at home. I’d be a tad upset as well.
Two of my renters are state of Florida workers. Both told me they will not return to the office. It’s work from home or quit.
A large number of office lease space will be downsized at the least. Our company needs half of what we have.
I’d love to work from home.
Sometimes I can for a half of one.
One of the untrainables,unguideable, or helpless breaks something or cannot do something very basic without handholding.
That’s manufacturing for you.
An upshot is I have the whole floor to myself most of the time.
I listen to the music I like and spin a DVD of some classic TV at lunch.
I was speaking with my contact advisor at Fidelity Inv about just this thing and he said that since the shift to work at home they have seen productivity go through the roof.
Back in the day (1980’s) I used to go into the office on Sunday mornings. I found I could accomplish in about 2 hours what would take me a full day during the week. No phones, no one coming in to my office to ask me what they should do about this or that.
My observation over the years has been that if a work group knows each other well and then starts working from home, things can go smoothly. But it’s difficult to bring in new people, and it makes changes tougher. If Bob’s job is going out in the field, doing something and then filing reports, he can do this from home. But if Bob has to learn a new skill or duty, he can’t just stop by Joe’s cubicle. And, since they’re no longer chatting daily, with time Joe and Bill lose some of the ‘team spirit’.
It does make it much easier to cut somebody loose though, because now you’re just that ‘guy on Zoom’.
What’s happening with commercial real estate ?
Any media (MSM or otherwise) talking about the effect of the wuhanvirus & work-from-home on the property values?
Fink is a control freak. Obviously he hates this.
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