Indexor

BlackRock/iShares Could Shake Things Up: Three Potential Changes

Higher expense ratios certainly could be on the horizon, but competition from true competitors like Vanguard, SSgA, PIMCO and others would certainly be the beneficiary of such a move. In such a scenario, iShares could watch billions walk out the door, that would be increasingly more difficult to win back. My bet is that BlackRock is smarter than that.

In my humble opinion, your second point could prove to be the catalyst for the biggest growth in BlackRock's future. iShares is THE brand that the retirement market has been waiting for, in order to feel comfortable about transferring massive sums of capital out of the failed "active mutual fund" and "John Bogle's Buy-and-Hold" models, to provide truly viable retirement plans. Active MANAGEMENT of such plans (by either an astute owner or (better) a professional investment advisory firm) is essential to their success.

Your third point, because of my biased opinion against actively managed mutual funds, is not an area that I would anticipate contributing much to the bottom line. In fact, a better outcome may be that investors in BlackRock's actively managed mutual funds discover the benefits of both indexing and the ETF structure and upgrade to iShares.