Most investors — and virtually all of the industry’s biggest names — emphasise the importance of long-term thinking, without doing much about it. Larry Fink, chief executive of BlackRock, is different.

For years, he has been urging Wall Street to look toward the next decade instead of the next quarter. He has regularly and publicly attributed many of the economy’s ills — including poor adaptation to technological change and the pending retirement crisis — to an obsession with short-term returns.