Perfect timing?
BlackRock and CEO Larry Fink just got permission in August from regulators in China to start a mutual fund business there, a next step in the firm’s ever-expanding portfolio of investment activity with the communist nation.
At the same time there’s an election next week, and many expect Democrat Joe Biden to win. Fink’s name is often floated as his possible Treasury Secretary. He reportedly wanted the job in a Hillary Clinton administration, but then she lost.
Biden might like the China-enthusiast Fink for the role, since the former vice president was recently implicated as a potential beneficiary of investment in a scheme cooked up by his son Hunter and his business partners with now-bankrupt CEFC China Energy. A 2017 email – captured in a now-famous laptop computer left and ignored by Hunter Biden at a Delaware computer repair shop, and then turned over to Rudy Giuliani – outlined proposed equity stakes in Sinohawk Holdings, with “20” (percent) for “H” and “10 held by H for the big guy?”
Another business partner in Sinohawk, Tony Bobulinski, confirmed last week and on Fox News last night that “the big guy” referred to Joe Biden. Bobulinski was brought into the fold by Hunter Biden and another business partner to be CEO of Sinohawk, which he said was “a partnership between the Chinese operating through CEFC/Chairman Ye and the Biden family.” A contract between Hunter Biden and CEFC was to pay him $10 million per year “for introductions alone.”
“I’ve seen Vice President Biden saying he never talked to Hunter about his business,” Bobulinski said in a press conference. “I’ve seen firsthand that that’s not true, because it wasn’t just Hunter’s business, they said they were putting the Biden family name and its legacy on the line…The Biden family aggressively leveraged the Biden family name to make millions of dollars from foreign entities even though some were from communist controlled China.”
Before his Sinohawk activity, in 2013 while Joe Biden was vice president, Hunter walked away with a $1-billion investment deal with the state-owned Bank of China, following a December trip with his father to the nation on Air Force Two. The arrangement is outlined in investigative reporter Peter Schweizer’s book “Secret Empires.”
Fink likes Chinese partnerships too. While the newly permitted venture will be a “wholly-owned mutual fund business in Shanghai,” according to the Wall Street Journal, the communist regulators approved BlackRock’s mutual fund as “a joint venture with China Construction Bank Corp.” and a Singapore firm.
Another state-owned bank, CCB is the second largest in the world in terms of assets, with a market capitalization of $203.8 billion, according to Forbes. BlackRock is the world’s largest asset manager, handling $7.3 trillion. The deal between the two opens the market for BlackRock to manage investments for Chinese citizens – the firm has already done so for high-net-worth investors in the country for about 10 years, according to the Wall Street Journal. That operation is in conjunction with the Bank of China – the Hunter Biden investment partner mentioned above.
BlackRock’s Fink, who has moralized for years now about the need for “corporate social responsibility” by investing in environmental, social, and governance (ESG) priorities, willfully ignores the corrupt, dictatorial, repressive and genocidal Chinese government. He has refused to divest from the 137 Chinese companies listed on American stock exchanges, as has been urged by National Legal and Policy Center. Revelations about the Communist Chinese Party’s abuses in Hong Kong, and of the Muslim minority Uighurs in Xinjiang, have not held back Fink’s ambitions.
Fink and the firm’s top executives earmarked China as a priority. The firm held talks with different potential Chinese partners in an attempt to expand further in China…
“I continue to firmly believe China will be one of the biggest opportunities for BlackRock over the long term, both for asset managers and investors, despite the uncertainty and decoupling of global systems we’re seeing today,” Mr. Fink said in a letter to the firm’s shareholders earlier this year.
And Fink’s new, communist-owned partner has its own shady past. CCB has a lengthy history of its leadership involved in bribery, graft, and money laundering – even earning an enforcement action in 2015 from the U.S. Federal Reserve Bank to clean up its act.
Sounds like a partner only a Biden could love. If Joe wins next week, maybe Fink’s similar affinities and ties with China will help him clinch the administration job.