The Colossus of Wall Street

As chairman and chief executive officer of BlackRock (BLK), Larry Fink controls more money than Germany has GDP. BlackRock is the world's biggest asset management firm, a $3.45 trillion powerhouse that's the largest counterparty on Wall Street, on track to pay investment banks $1 billion in fees this year. It manages $1.4 trillion for state pension funds in New York, New Jersey, and California, among others, invests $240 billion for central banks and sovereign wealth funds such as the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, and in the U.S. stock and bond markets, it's responsible for a massive amount of trading volume each day. BlackRock serves as the U.S. Treasury Dept.'s go-to source for private sector financial expertise and managed at least $150 billion in toxic assets on behalf of U.S. taxpayers after the 2008 bailouts of American International Group (AIG) and Bear Stearns. While running the company is a team effort, Fink, 58, is BlackRock's brain, and BlackRock, increasingly, is Wall Street's.

"There's no bank, no sovereign wealth fund, no insurance company that's as large as BlackRock," says Ralph Schlosstein, a co-founder who left in 2007 and is now CEO of investment bank Evercore Partners. "BlackRock today is one of, if not the, most influential financial institutions in the world."