When your house gets flooded, you ring a plumber. When it catches fire, you contact the fire brigade. When banks get worried about their risk exposures they call Larry Fink.

When he left investment bank First Boston to start BlackRock in 1988, Fink was convinced asset managers were scarcely aware of the risks they were running. Initially, he resisted merger opportunities saying, in 2000: "Nine out of ten of them work out horribly."