Which financial entity has more clout? The following is a list of the largest banks in the US by assets under management (AUM). The top four banks now account for 50% of all US banking assets. A fairly large concentration and one which totals $8.97 trillion (for the first four). The top banks are the following: JPMorgan Chase, $2.74 trillion, BOFA, $2.38, Citigroup, $1.96, Wells Fargo, $1.89 trillion. The next in line are: #5, Goldman Sachs, $925 billion, #6, Morgan Stanley, $875 billion, #7, U.S. Bancorp, $475 billion, #8, PNC Financial Services, $392 billion, #9, TD Bank, $384 billion, #10, Capital One, $373 billion. So the top ten have 69% of all banking AUM. The banks are always in the news, and they had to be bailed out after 2008, so their reputation took a hit.
Then we have the asset managers that are not banks. The #1 is Blackrock, and it is listed as a “Global Investment Management Corporation”. It has $6.84 trillion under management. #2 is Vanguard, with $5.3 trillion, then State Street with $2.5 trillion and Fidelity with $2.46 trillion Only Blackrock’s AUM is current. But the top 4 pure asset managers have a combined total of $17.1 trillion. That is 90.6% larger than the top four banks, or almost as much as the entire US banking sector. By the publicity, (I think only Fidelity appears in TV ads), you wouldn’t know how powerful these companies are, or at least influential. Blackrock has participation in a large percentage of all the stocks and particularly the ETFs traded on US and world stock exchanges. Stocks make up 53.6% of their portfolio, while bonds make up 30%. However, you never hardly hear about these companies? Are they clean as a whistle?