BlackRock hires former Fed official Fischer as an adviser: memo

By Trevor Hunnicutt

(Reuters) - BlackRock Inc is hiring former U.S. Federal Reserve Vice Chair Stanley Fischer as a senior adviser, the world's largest fund manager said in a memo on Wednesday.

Over his career Fischer helped to shape modern economic theory as an academic, trained many future policymakers and put his ideas into practice in a series of jobs culminating in roles at the center of the response to the 2008 global financial crisis.

Fischer, who was born in Zambia, served as governor of the Bank of Israel from 2005 to 2013 before joining the Fed, where he was vice chair for 3-1/2 years until October 2017.

 

New York-based BlackRock, which manages about $6 trillion in assets, said Fischer would be a senior adviser within the BlackRock Investment Institute, an arm of the company that serves as a think tank on investment strategy, according to the memo co-signed by Chief Executive Larry Fink and confirmed by a company spokeswoman.

The memo said Fischer will add to the company's research, support its investment teams and speak with clients on markets, economics and central bank policy.

During his time at the Fed, as memories of the financial crisis faded, monetary policymakers continued to wrestle with how to undo their historic stimulus efforts at that time without sending the economy into another tailspin.

As some of his colleagues began wondering about a permanent downshift in global inflation and interest rates, Fischer maintained an underlying faith in the macroeconomic models - which he helped refine - that showed falling unemployment ultimately raising inflation and requiring higher interest rates in response.

Prior to his role as a monetary policymaker, Fischer was chief economist at the World Bank, and first deputy managing director at the International Monetary Fund during the Asian financial crisis. He was also a vice chairman at Citigroup Inc from 2002 to 2005.

(Reporting by Trevor Hunnicutt; Editing by Christopher Cushing)