Prime Brokerage and Financing
BlackRock is one of the world’s preeminent asset management firms and a premier provider of global investment management, risk management and advisory services to institutional, intermediary and individual investors around the world. BlackRock offers a range of solutions — from rigorous fundamental and quantitative active management approaches aimed at maximizing outperformance to highly efficient indexing strategies designed to gain broad exposure to the world’s capital markets. Our clients can access our investment solutions through a variety of product structures, including individual and institutional separate accounts, mutual funds and other pooled investment vehicles, and the industry-leading iShares® ETFs.
Business Unit Overview:
The Prime Brokerage and Financing [“PBF”] team supports the firm’s levered products through oversight across prime brokerage, derivatives and other related financing strategies; managing the costs of borrowing and overall financing. PBF serves as the main contact to prime brokers and counterparty credit departments. The team is also highly involved in activities such as but not limited to liquidity risk management and counterparty documentation initiatives.
Job Purpose/Background:
We have an opportunity for a qualified candidate to join the Prime Brokerage and Financing [“PBF”] team, this role is responsible for supporting both the equity and fixed income business’ based in London across all portfolio management groups.
Key Responsibilities:
- Become an expert in and be able to articulate the strategies, investment management process and financing methodologies of Blackrock’s managed funds.
- Develop functional product knowledge on prime brokerage financing, equities, swaps, fixed income, repo, and other instruments.
- Understand front to back trade workflow and trade lifecycle events.
- Build strong working relationships across multiple groups that are the team’s clients and partners.
- Work with internal groups to review guidelines and product launches to determine the level of involvement, complexity and prioritization required by the Prime Brokerage Financing team.
- Be able to quickly retrieve, store, and organize key information about funds covered by the team including strategy, portfolio construction and other financial data.
- Continuously build upon and improve team processes and creatively problem solve new issues.
- Interact with external credit officers and be able to resolve on-going inquiries or escalation as part of their credit reviews of BlackRock’s managed funds.
- Support the Prime Brokerage Financing team as necessary on a variety of objectives as needed.
- Provide oversight of existing financing structures or terms and renegotiate where applicable.
Development Value:
The PBF team interacts with portfolio management teams and trading groups across all business units within BlackRock. This allows team members to gain an excellent understanding of firm wide initiatives and a deep understanding of BlackRock’s global product offering. PBF has a global reach with people on the ground in London, New York and San Francisco. The team mandate requires members to gain deep understanding of alternative products, bespoke trading strategies, alternative fund industry and maintain knowledge of the regulatory landscape. This extends to regular interaction with internal partners such as legal and compliance, technology and Risk. PBF will also negotiate financing terms on behalf of the firm’s diverse product range, facing off to all of BlackRock’s major trading counterparties to ensure efficient portfolio financing.
Knowledge / Experience:
- Some understanding of prime brokerage financing, equity and fixed income securities and other financial instruments.
- Strong relationship management and interpersonal skills
Skills / Qualifications:
- Advanced Microsoft Excel skills at a minimum; experience with Visual Basic, Access and other database environments is preferred.
- Knowledge of or ability to quickly learn SQL query writing; understanding of complex data structures is preferred.
Competencies:
- Excellent organizational and problem solving skills, be able to manage and prioritize a wide variety of concurrent and competing projects.
- Ability to work independently, think through issues and propose solutions.
- Willingness to learn and work collaboratively and continuously.
- Ability to adapt to a fast changing environment.
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