Who Owns BlackRock and Vanguard?
From a firm under Blackstone's umbrella and a fund company owned by its own funds to today’s holders, and the debate about their reach
BlackRock and Vanguard hold shares in most large American companies, for the people invested in their funds. This story follows who owned the two firms themselves, from 1974 and 1988 to today, then lets each side of a debate about their reach speak in its own words.
Every line drawn below is a sourced link, and every quote is the speaker’s own words. A connection is not evidence of wrongdoing.
Two firms. BlackRock has its head office at 50 Hudson Yards in New York; Vanguard’s is in Malvern, Pennsylvania. Through their funds, both hold shares in many of America’s largest companies, for the people invested in those funds. So who owns the two firms themselves?
24 Sep 1974
1974: Vanguard. John C. Bogle joined Wellington Management in 1951 and became its president in 1967. In January 1974 its board voted him out as president. That September he incorporated Vanguard to run the Wellington funds’ administration; it began operations in May 1975.
31 Aug 1976
Owned by its funds. Bogle set Vanguard up to be owned by the funds it runs, and so by their investors. In August 1976 he launched First Index Investment Trust, now Vanguard 500 Index Fund, for individual investors. That fund provides about 14% of Vanguard’s capital.
1988
1988: under Blackstone’s umbrella. Larry Fink left First Boston and, with seven colleagues, formed Blackstone Financial Management with Blackstone, the firm Stephen A. Schwarzman and Peter G. Peterson had founded. Blackstone gave it a $5 million credit line for half of the business, according to the book King of Capital.
28 Feb 1995
1992 to 1995: BlackRock, sold. The firm took the name BlackRock in 1992. In June 1994 Blackstone agreed to sell it to PNC, a Pittsburgh bank, which completed the purchase, for about $240 million, in February 1995. Schwarzman later called the sale a heroic mistake.
1 Dec 2009
1999 to 2009: growing by buying. BlackRock listed in October 1999, with PNC keeping 70%. In 2006 BlackRock took over Merrill Lynch’s fund business, giving Merrill Lynch 49.3%. In 2009 BlackRock bought Barclays Global Investors, maker of iShares, for $15.2 billion, giving Barclays 19.8%.
Jun 2020
2011 to 2020: the big owners leave. In June 2011 BlackRock bought back the last shares held by Bank of America, which had taken over Merrill Lynch. Barclays sold all of its shares in May 2012, and PNC sold its 22% in May 2020.
Mar 2026
Who holds BlackRock today. Among the largest holders in March 2026 were Vanguard Capital Management, a Vanguard subsidiary, with 6.87%, held mostly for Vanguard funds, and the Kuwait Investment Authority, with 5.14%, held for the Government of Kuwait.
Mar 2026
Holding for clients. Through their funds, each firm holds roughly 5% to 8% of companies such as Tesla, Microsoft and Amazon, for its clients: mostly the people invested in the funds, who get the gains and losses. A third big manager, State Street, reports hundreds of millions of shares in Microsoft and Amazon the same way. The firms manage the shares and vote part of them.
Mar 2016
2016: a legal argument. When the same few investors hold shares in competing companies, economists call it common ownership. In the Harvard Law Review the law professor Einer Elhauge argued that such holdings make competitors compete less, and that they can break antitrust law.
Apr 2017
2017: the Big Three. A study by Jan Fichtner, Eelke M. Heemskerk and Javier Garcia-Bernardo found BlackRock, Vanguard and State Street together to be the largest shareholder in 88% of S&P 500 companies, siding with company management in more than 90% of votes.
May 2018
2018: the airline study. Studying U.S. airlines from 2001 to 2014, José Azar, Martin C. Schmalz and Isabel Tecu reported fares 3% to 7% higher than if the airlines had been separately owned. They called reduced competition a hidden social cost of diversification.
29 Nov 2018
2018: the founder’s warning. Bogle wrote that if index funds keep growing, the three biggest might own 30% or more of the U.S. stock market, a concentration he did not believe would serve the national interest. He added that their enormous value should not be ignored.
15 Jan 2019
2019: BlackRock replies. In 2017 BlackRock called the evidence fragile. In a 2019 letter to the U.S. Federal Trade Commission it cited Analysis Group, a consultant it hired, which reported that with two of the study’s assumptions changed, the link to fares lost statistical significance.
1 Feb 2021
2021: Vanguard replies. In a letter to the same agency, Vanguard called common ownership an unproven hypothesis, and said the advisers of its funds do not make investment decisions in coordination with other investors.
Sep 2021
2021: later work. In a working paper, Azar and the economist Xavier Vives reported that common ownership by BlackRock, Vanguard and State Street went with lower airline prices, and common ownership by other shareholders with higher ones.
Sep 2022
2022: a second study. In the same journal, Patrick Dennis, Kristopher Gerardi and Carola Schenone reported that the link between common ownership and fares came from the airlines’ market shares, not from who owned them or who controlled them.
Sep 2022
2022: the authors reply. Azar, Schmalz and Tecu answered that ownership changes do predict price changes. Tecu had already written that such studies do not show that no such effects exist, and Elhauge had answered an earlier draft.
Mar 2026
Still open. A 2020 study for the European Parliament called it still an open debate whether common ownership helps or harms competition. Every line here is a sourced link: open the explorer to follow any of them.
Explore further: open BlackRock’s page for its owners over time, read “Who is behind BlackRock?” on its question page, or see every side at once on “Who benefited from common ownership of US airlines?”.