Lee Kranefuss, an exchange-traded fund luminary, has been dismissed from the iShares board. According to parent company BlackRock, Inc., George Parker, Ph.D., of Stanford University Graduate School of Business, will replace Kranefuss as the chairman of the board of trustees of iShares Trust and the board of directors of iShares, Inc. The announcement is retroactively effective to April 30th. Kranefuss has served as an interested trustee/director and chairman of each board since 2003.
The announcement comes on the heels of disappointing first-quarter earnings for BlackRock. The company reported Monday, April 26, that earnings more than quadrupled in the first quarter but were weaker than expected as outflows exceeded inflows and customers shifted their money into less lucrative passive funds.
Laurence Fink, BlackRock's chief executive, blamed the increase in outflows on clients changing their portfolios by moving into passive funds.
"Much of this has to do with the consternation of our clients," said Fink at the time. "Some of our clients were derisking, while some were rebalancing."
