Page 30 - Investment Advisor May 2021

Portfolio, Investing & the Markets

Abigail Johnson, Fidelity Investments’ president, CEO and Cathie Wood, the
chairperson, stands out as the leader of a financial power- founder and CEO
house. Since Johnson became CEO in late 2014, total assets at of Ark Investment
Fidelity have doubled to $10.2 trillion. Plus, the discretionary Management, has
portion of these assets grew 86% over this time period to $3.9 single-handedly revi-
trillion by year-end 2020. talized the idea of the
rock star portfolio
manager, which pretty
much disappeared
with the explosion of
index investing.
The old-fashioned
stock picker not only
presides over one of
the fastest growing
asset managers but also serves as its chief investment offi-
cer. Plus, she successfully battled minority owner Resolute
Investment Managers to keep control of Ark.
The firm’s recent launch of the ARK Space Exploration
ETF attracted nearly $200 million on its first trading day in
Under Johnson’s leadership, Fidelity launched fractional late March.
share trading well before other traditional financial firms did
so. Fidelity also has embraced digital assets, creating a digital Larry Fink, like Cathie Wood, is the founder of the company
assets platform for custody and trade execution and intro- he now heads as CEO — BlackRock, the world’s largest asset
duced a Bitcoin fund for wealthy investors. manager with more than $8.7 trillion in assets. Fink has dis-
tinguished himself by encouraging other asset managers and
Chamath Palihapitiya, corporations to address climate risk, which he sees as a key
CEO of Social Capital risk for the global economy and for investments.
Hedosophia Holdings,
former Facebook execu-
tive and venture capital- Johnson: Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg; Palihapitiya: Mark Kauzlarich/Bloomberg; Wood: courtesy of ARK Invest; Fink: Stefan Wermuth-Bloomberg
ist, is the individual most
associated with the surge
of special purpose acqui-
sition companies, or
SPACs, which raise capi-
tal through initial public
offerings to buy existing
companies. Close to 250
SPACs went public last
year, raising over $83 bil-
lion — a number that’s “Climate risk is investment risk,” wrote Fink in his
already been exceeded annual letter to CEOs last year, which he repeated in 2021,
this year by almost $5 adding that “climate transition presents a historic invest-
billion, according to ment opportunity.”
SPAC Research. Fink sees a “tectonic shift” in passive investing when more
Palihapitiya has said he’s reserved the tickers IPOA through public companies disclose their carbon footprints, allowing
IPOZ for his SPACs and told Fortune magazine in 2020 that BlackRock and other asset managers to customize sustain-
his ambition for Social Capital is for it “to be our generation’s ability indexes for investors. The recently launched BlackRock
Berkshire Hathaway.” He has launched multiple SPACs since U.S. Carbon Transition Readiness ETF attracted $1.25 billion
2019 and plans to take robo-advisor SoFi public through a SPAC. on its first day of trading, more than any other ETF to date.

28 INVESTMENT ADVISOR MAY 2021 | ThinkAdvisor.com