BlackRock's Fink engineers biggest deal of career

By Svea Herbst-Bayliss

BOSTON (Reuters) - In the rarefied circles of institutional investors and government officials asking for investment aid, Laurence Fink is known as the go-to man.

Now he may become that to average savers around the world.

As chief executive of BlackRock Inc (BLK.N), already the largest publicly traded U.S. asset manager, Fink this week engineered a blockbuster deal to buy Barclays Plc's investment unit BGI. Together they will become world's biggest money manager with roughly $2.8 trillion of assets.

To analysts and investors the move is typical Fink -- a carefully considered deal with a hefty price tag designed to add critical mass, access new products and bring in the retail clients BlackRock has long wanted to attract.

And one the California native, known for keeping top talent happy, is expected to execute on time.

"There is potential there for BlackRock to pull this one off," said Michael Herbst, a mutual fund industry analyst at research firm Morningstar Inc.

Since 1988 when Fink co-founded BlackRock as a one-room fixed income shop, he has proven his hand at orchestrating a string of acquisitions, including a $8.6 billion deal to buy Merrill Lynch Investment Managers in 2006.

Before that he bought Boston-based State Street Research & Management and after that purchased the funds-of-funds business from Quellos Group.