The move could see BlackRock’s top-paid private market executives eventually earning millions in payouts if funds perform exceptionally well over the next decade. (No figures have been disclosed yet, and BlackRock won’t say what its profit-sharing carry program is worth.) With the pay plan, BlackRock aims to lock down talent at the world’s largest asset manager as it wages a fierce war with other firms for top private market players. The bid to keep people in their seats is particularly acute, as the gargantuan company continues its massive strategic push into the alternative asset management gold rush.
The new pay offering, called the executive carry program, was adopted on Jan. 13, and is the latest indicator of the seriousness of BlackRock’s bet on alternatives, which now account for $660 billion of the $14 trillion in assets under management (AUM) at the firm.
“There has been a flow of talent from the public company investment sector to the private company sector,” said R.J. Bannister, partner and chief operating officer at compensation consulting firm Farient Advisors. “One of the reasons for individuals to go is because of the more lucrative pay amounts from carried interest programs.”
“That’s what makes it a very attractive vehicle to the employee,” said Hosken. “They are actually getting treated as an owner in the entity.”
Post-acquisitions, BlackRock told investors it hopes revenue from private markets and technology will make up more than a fifth of its revenue in the coming years, and CEO and chairman Larry Fink told investors this month the firm is working toward a private markets fundraising goal of $400 billion by 2030.
The company reported $24.2 billion in revenue in its most recent fiscal year. Its leadership team believes “this evolution of BlackRock’s business will translate to higher and more durable organic growth, greater resilience through market cycles, and multiple expansion for shareholders,” the firm told investors in its 2025 proxy statement.
Steven Kaplan, professor of finance and entrepreneurship at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, noted that some large asset management firms have lost a lot of talent to private equity.
“The churn from asset management to private equity can be brutal,” said Kaplan, who is also cocreator of the Kaplan-Schoar private equity returns benchmarking approach. “What’s worse is if you don’t pay your really good people, then they leave. That’s the worst thing.”
At BlackRock, the firm’s new executive carry program comes with a caveat that effectively builds a talent moat around its senior alts team: If you leave to join a competitor, start a rival fund, or engage in what BlackRock deems “competitive activity,” your stake in the new carry program ticks down to zero. BlackRock defines competitive activity as anything “that competes with the business operations of BlackRock, the general partner, or any of their respective subsidiaries, affiliates, and successors, as determined by the general partner in its sole discretion.”
According to the disclosed provisions, both vested and unvested portions of carry distributions will be forfeited if an executive is found by BlackRock to have engaged directly or indirectly in competitive activity. Bannister of Farient said these types of total forfeiture provisions are designed to be especially punitive if an executive leaves for a competitor.
“It’s meant to provide handcuffs and provide the company with holding power,” said Bannister. “If [employees] leave, they leave a significant amount of value on the table.” Executives tend not to like total forfeiture provisions, he said, but they often accept them because the potential upside and previous track record means it’s worth their time and commitment.
Generally, the provisions serve a dual purpose, said Aalap Shah, managing director of compensation firm Pearl Meyer.
“The main thing a firm would want to do is keep the team together that they’ve assembled,” he said. The provisions can also serve as “a deterrent” to competitors. “Basically, it’s going to be expensive to steal a team member because they’re going to ask you for a lot of money” to make up for the carry they’re walking away from.
BlackRock isn’t alone in requiring unvested and vested carry to be wiped out if an executive engages in competitive activity, which is known in the industry as being a “bad leaver.” But forfeiting vested carry as well as unvested is less common, comp experts agreed.
On the other hand, the approach buys time. A flourish in BlackRock’s carry program that distinguishes it from some staid market practices is that the vesting schedule is backloaded, meaning executives don’t vest at all until year three of a five-year vesting schedule. Steffen Pauls, a former managing director at KKR, called the backloaded vesting schedule “unusual but investor-friendly” to BlackRock’s customers. Similarly, Shah said a five-year vesting time frame is fairly typical generally, but he often sees 20% annual vesting.
“It really makes sure that the team stays around until that first distribution kicks in,” noted Pauls, founder of Moonfare, a digital platform that gives investors access to private equity and venture capital funds.
A BlackRock spokesman referred questions about its carry program to its public disclosures and declined to comment further.
According to a securities filing disclosing the program’s broad strokes, the unnamed executives chosen to participate in the program will each get a percentage of the eventual profits BlackRock hopes to collect from its investments, although the payouts are subject to holdbacks and other restrictions. They come in the form of carried interest distributions via a pool of the asset manager’s flagship private market funds. The flagship funds generally raise more than $1 billion in committed investment capital apiece, and are expected to include each of BlackRock’s private asset classes, including infrastructure, private debt, private equity, and real estate.
Like BlackRock, Goldman said its move will align senior leaders’ annual compensation with its alts strategic initiative and its clients, and help it onboard and retain top talent. Similarly, Goldman’s carried interest program says carry points will be subject to forfeiture and clawback provisions whether vested or not if an executive jumps to a competitor, a consistent point across its compensation programs.
Goldman requires carry participants to put their own money into each alt fund in the carry program in the form of a minimum limited partner commitment of $1 million a head for Solomon, chief operating officer John Waldron, and chief financial officer Denis Coleman. Other participants have to make a minimum $50,000 investment.
“There’s money to be made, so that’s the No. 1 driver,” he continued. “But also, there’s got to be demand for it, and the demand is that there’s a substantial amount of assets in this market. If you want to provide the market portfolio to your investors, you have to play in that space.”
Editor’s note, Jan. 30, 2026. This article has been updated to state that the combined cash and stock purchase price of Global Infrastructure Partners and HPS Investment Partners was more than $24 billion.
