BlackRock Denies Any CDO Issues (BLK)

By Douglas A. McIntyre Published Feb 19, 12:21PM EST

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BlackRock Inc. (NYSE: BLK) is one of the more well thought of asset managers out there. It typically doesn’t have to respond to market rumors, but there were rumors abound that BlackRock was hiding CDO losses, and the rumors even evolved into rumors of an investigation.

While BlackRock usually doesn’t comment on rumors or speculation, it did today since this had taken shares down nearly 10% from intraday highs. Here are some of the important guts of the firms comments. As far as rumors related to potential losses from CDO and subprime exposure, BlackRock stated:

"There is simply no truth to today’s reported rumors….. BlackRock has no material exposure or losses related to either subprime assets or CDO investments….. In its fourth quarter earnings release, the Company disclosed $12 million of impairment charges related to CDO seed investments, which represented a substantial portion of the remaining balance sheet exposure to CDOs….. BlackRock is not aware of any Department of Justice investigation relating to BlackRock."

Many market and stock rumors still make their way around Wall Street, and often rumors move stocks more than actual news does. Shares have recovered sharply from intraday lows. At $193, BlackRock is still a bit closer to its highs of the year than to its lows. Its 52-week trading range is $139.20 to $231.99.

Jon C. Ogg
February 19, 2008

About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.