“And obviously, if we're able to continue to deliver organic base fee growth well in excess of our 5% target, which we've done for the last 6 quarters in a row to 9% clip, 13% over the last 12 months, we're going to see some elevated expenses to be able to drive that success.”

In context

“dex AUM, which is fundamentally driven by our success in iShares. That number was up roughly 38% year-over-year, but there's always going to be some noise in that number as we try to effectively manage that expense on behalf of the fund shareholders. So in this case, this year, while there are always some timing issues, it did reflect some one-time expenses associated with moving indexes from one provider to the next to try and basically get those at lower costs. And when you exclude a little bit of noise, that number was probably up about 31% year-over-year versus average iShares AUM increased just close to 34%. So I would say, yes, there are some expense increase. I would say it's less tied to inflation for us than other players. It's really more tied to continuing to invest for growth. And obviously, if we're able to continue to deliver organic base fee growth well in excess of our 5% target, which we've done for the last 6 quarters in a row to 9% clip, 13% over the last 12 months, we're going to see some elevated expenses to be able to drive that success. Laurence Fink: And on the products in a more inflationary environment, I would just clearly tell you that our platform is large, it's diverse. We're having conversations with clients globally where they should be allocating. I do believe you're seeing higher allocation towards equities over the last year across our client's portfolios. As equities rally, they did less in terms of rebalancing. The bigger question is, how do you allocate across equities? What is a roll-up of emerging markets? But I don't think inflation is playing a dominant role in the conversations. Even in fixed thinking, we're obviously -- it's very obvious long-duration assets are going to be the impact ed the most. And so those clients in fixed income who are worried about their duration risk that could go down into a”