Do we like them?

Do we like BlackRock?

World's largest asset manager (iShares ETFs, Aladdin software, funds), managing over $10 trillion. Based in New York.

Our score: 5 out of 10. Mixed. We found no big recent fine, but there is an SEC fine, past settlements and a live antitrust case, and our searches turned up little concrete good work.

BlackRock is the biggest money manager on the planet, with more than $10 trillion under management, according to The Motley Fool. Larry Fink is the CEO, and he is still the public face of the firm. It is listed on the NYSE as BLK.

The big drama is the coal case. Texas and other Republican-led states say BlackRock, Vanguard and State Street used their shareholdings to pressure coal firms into cutting output. BlackRock calls it baseless. A federal judge refused to dismiss it, saying the states had shown enough circumstantial evidence.

The US Justice Department is reportedly weighing whether to join the case. The FTC and DOJ also filed a statement saying asset managers are still bound by antitrust law. This is still only an allegation, and nothing has been proved.

There's also a history of smaller run-ins. Tennessee's AG sued over alleged misleading ESG claims, and it settled with no fines and more disclosure. BlackRock paid $2.5M to the SEC over a disclosure failure. It also paid $9.65M to settle a claim about its own staff 401(k) plan.

Our score is a middle 5. Nothing we found points to a company to avoid, but the legal fights are real. Fink also keeps pushing the AI and data-centre build-out, where BlackRock has a stake of its own, and we found little clearly good work to offset that.