Barbara Novick’s Keynote Address at Harvard Law School

In a recent event of the Harvard Law School Program on Corporate Governance, BlackRock Vice-Chairman Barbara Novick delivered a keynote address on Blackrock’s stewardship. A video of her presentation is available on the Program’s website here. Following her presentation Ms. Novick engaged in a dialog with the participants, but the dialog was subject to Chatham House Rules and is therefore not included in the video.

In her address, titled “The Goldilocks Dilemma,” Ms. Novick focused on the stewardship of BlackRock as well as other large index fund managers. Among other things, she engaged with the analysis and evidence put forward in academic works by Harvard Law School faculty. Such works include Index Funds and the Future of Corporate Governance: Theory, Evidence, and Policy by Lucian Bebchuk and Scott Hirst; The Specter of the Giant Three by Lucian Bebchuk and Scott Hirst; The Agency Problems of Institutional Investors by Lucian Bebchuk, Alma Cohen, and Scott Hirst; and The Future of Corporate Governance Part I: The Problem of Twelve by John Coates.

Ms. Novick is Vice-Chairman and Co-Founder of Blackrock, and a member of BlackRock’s Global Executive Committee, Enterprise Risk Committee and Geopolitical Risk Committee. From the inception of the firm in 1988 to 2008, Ms. Novick headed the Global Client Group. In her current role, Ms. Novick oversees the firm’s efforts globally for public policy and for investment stewardship. Ms. Novick has authored numerous pieces on public policy issues and investment stewardship. She has also contributed a number of posts to our Forum in the past year (see here, here, here and here).