BlackRock is piling money into the U.K. as Larry Fink claims the country has discovered its ‘capitulation point’

Larry Fink says the U.K. market is undervalued. · Fortune · Michael Nagle—Bloomberg/Getty Images

Ryan Hogg

Mon, April 28, 2025 

Larry Fink, CEO of the $11.6 trillion investing titan BlackRock, is used to making contrarian bets. The entire U.K. economy, much maligned in the past year, could be his latest one.

Fink says BlackRock is investing in U.K. assets “across the board” after being reassured by the Labour government’s “pro-growth” agenda, adding that the U.K. and Europe are entering a rebound era after discovering their “capitulation point.”

The 72-year-old BlackRock boss has spied an investing opportunity in the U.K., name-checking finance stocks like NatWest, Lloyds, and St. James’s Place as equities that were undervalued by a level of negativity that Fink thinks “was probably not warranted.”

In his interview with the Times, Fink pointed to several examples of shifting public practices that gave him confidence in the U.K.’s ability to discover fresh growth opportunities and argued that Keir Starmer’s government was focused on “hard issues.”

“It just resonated with me—that there are so many fundamentally strong attributes about the U.K. and Europe, and they’ve been so smothered by overregulation, by too much control,” he said. “And to me, it was just very clear we were at a capitulation point.”

Fink’s positive ruminations on the U.K. economy are a divergence from popular opinion, which has painted the U.K. as a growth laggard on the cusp of both a recession and an exodus of its richest citizens.

Businesses have complained about new national insurance obligations and flexible working policies that they argue make it harder to hire and grow. Meanwhile, there are reports that billionaires are kick-starting a mass exodus from the country owing to changes in non-dom tax regulations. Billionaire real estate investing brothers Ian and Richard Livingstone were among the latest to exit the U.K., joining thousands of others since last May’s election.

The U.K. is also facing pressure on its already tight public finances from the Donald Trump administration’s threats of widespread retaliatory tariffs that would significantly affect growth.

These pressures appear to be driving the dominant sentiment among the U.K. public.

An Ipsos MORI poll revealed 75% of Brits expect the economy to get worse over the next 12 months, marking the gloomiest sentiment among the public since the survey was launched in 1978. The group’s Economic Optimism Index registered a -68, worse than results during the cost-of-living crisis in 2022, the Global Financial Crisis in 2008, and a global recession kick-starting in 1980.

That sentiment is similar among businesses, which are beginning to build their defenses ahead of a possible recession induced by the tariff war. The U.K.’s Purchasing Managers’ Index fell to its lowest level since 2022 in March, suggesting businesses are reducing activity owing to low confidence.

Despite this evidence to the contrary, however, Fink is cheerier on the U.K. than he was in the final months of Rishi Sunak’s premiership. Bloomberg reported last year that BlackRock was among the investment groups being wooed by Chancellor Rachel Reeves to help rebuild Britain.

“I have more confidence in the U.K. economy today than I did a year ago.”

Fink laments lack of space

One obstacle that might halt BlackRock’s march on the U.K. is office space.

Fink is keen to bring all of his approximately 3,000 London employees under one roof to expedite the group’s bet on the U.K. He’s being foiled, though, by a lack of available real estate.

“I am so short of space here in London with all our acquisitions. I need an office tomorrow, but there is nothing here,” Fink told the Times.

“If I knew I could put the shovel in the ground in the next 12 months, I’d build our own.”

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

UC study uncovers unexpected link between police spending, housing prices

Breaking down the data by income level reveals large but opposite moves in home prices

University of Cincinnati

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A first-of-its-kind study on the link between police budgeting and the housing market seemed to be a dead end — showing practically no relation between the spending on law enforcement and home transaction volume and prices, just like previous studies. 

But University of Cincinnati economics professor David Brasington found surprising results when he split the data between low-income and high-income communities: large, completely opposite moves in housing prices.

Brasington, PhD, published a new study called “The Effect of Increased Police Spending on House Prices and Sales Volume: A Tale of Two Types of Cities.” In it, he wrote that “the small or nonexistent link between house prices and crime found by the literature really just reflects the sum of large but opposite moves in house prices in different market segments.”

His research, published in the Journal of Real Estate Finance and Economics, found that voting to increase the police budget raises housing prices by about 13% in low-income communities, but lowers housing prices by at least 14% in high-income communities. 

“Nobody had split the sample between the higher- and lower-income areas,” he said. Without splitting the data, the results virtually cancel each other out. Those huge swings on opposite sides of the income range were hidden in plain sight, he said, even as economic theoretical models supported the existence of an effect of police spending on housing. 

“Just intuitively, you’d think that police services would make a difference in house prices. And it just wasn’t there in the data,” he added, “until you split the sample.” 

In his study, Brasington analyzed communities across Ohio by looking into decades of votes on taxes to increase police funding by an average of 15%. He then compares that to Ohio’s housing data from 1995 to 2018.

At the onset of his research, Brasington’s plan was to compare police tax renewals and home sale volumes. Overall, the data showed little change in volume and prices after a police funding levy. Even after dividing his sample by income, he says that there is seemingly no link between police spending and the quantity of houses sold in a community. But the decrease in home prices for high-income communities and increase in home prices in low-income communities remained consistent for at least five years following the police budget vote. 

Brasington says that the decrease in housing prices on the high end suggests police may be overfunded in richer communities. “If you cut police taxes and services, the high end views that as a good thing,” he said. “There would be an increased demand for those houses because of the tax cut and a decreased supply of houses,” he added.

He also says there could be value in looking into how other types of levies impact home prices, and what these big swings on high- and low-income areas mean for the middle class, in future research. 

But for lower-income communities, he says the data from this report suggests additional spending on crime-fighting could be worth it. “There’s something about housing demand that says, ‘We need more police funds,’” he said. 

Read the complete study.

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Journal

The Journal of Real Estate Finance and Economics

Method of Research

Data/statistical analysis

Subject of Research

People

Article Title

The Effect of Increased Police Spending on House Prices and Sales Volume: A Tale of Two Types of Cities

Article Publication Date

28-Apr-2025

 

Toward defining problematic media usage patterns in adolescents

JAMA Network

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About The Article: This Viewpoint proposes an analogous taxonomy for digital media use that identifies patterns of use, irrespective of content, that could be problematic but, at a minimum, should be flagged as warranting further evaluation and potential remediation.

Corresponding Author: To contact the corresponding author, Dimitri A. Christakis, MD, MPH, email dimitri.christakis@seattlechildrens.org.

To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/

(doi:10.1001/jama.2025.6113)

Editor’s Note: Please see the article for additional information, including other authors, author contributions and affiliations, conflict of interest and financial disclosures, and funding and support.

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Embed this link to provide your readers free access to the full-text article This link will be live at the embargo time https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/10.1001/jama.2025.6113?guestAccessKey=fc50fd0f-5be4-45e1-a5df-7e2030dd1b61&utm_source=For_The_Media&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=ftm_links&utm_content=tfl&utm_term=042825

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Journal

JAMA

 

Once bitten, animals develop resistance that shrinks tick population

Washington State University

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Just in time for tick season, new research is shining a light on how animals develop resistance to tick bites, which points toward the possibility of developing more effective vaccines against the tiny, disease-carrying bloodsuckers.

In a study of “acquired tick resistance” among deer mice, rabbits and cattle, researchers at Washington State University found that once host animals were exposed to ticks, they developed resistance to bites that dramatically shrank the tick population going forward. That’s important because population size is a crucial element of tick ecology: More ticks mean more disease and other tick-associated problems in humans, wildlife and livestock.

“A lot of attention goes into trying to figure out what makes tick populations increase or decrease—what makes them more abundant here and less abundant there?” said Jeb Owen, an associate professor of entomology at WSU and the corresponding author of the new paper published in the journal Ticks and Tick-Borne Diseases. “If we understand those phenomena, we can try to find ways to take advantage of that to limit tick-associated problems.”

Most tick research relies on experiments using lab animals such as house mice or guinea pigs, which are not the targets of ticks in the wild. In order to “bridge the gap between lab models and tick ecology,” the new study used populations of three species that are hosts for the Rocky Mountain wood tick in the wild: deer mice, rabbits and cattle. The animals were housed at the U.S. Department of Agriculture facilities at the University of Idaho, and the research was conducted by a team of scientists from WSU and the USDA.

Researchers fed the ticks on the animals at three life stages—larvae, nymphs and adults—and compared tick feeding, development and reproduction on animals that had been previously infested by ticks against those that had not. In each case, previously infested hosts developed resistance, and the tick population was reduced at all life stages. On average, nearly 23% fewer ticks on tick-exposed hosts reached adulthood and adult females produced 32% fewer larvae. Subsequent simulations indicated that acquired immunity in the hosts could reduce the mean population growth of three-host ticks by 68%.

“Cumulatively, across the life cycle, the impacts are very large,” Owen said. “This gives us new insight into why tick populations go up and down.”

Problems associated with ticks are wide-ranging. Tick-borne diseases in humans include Lyme disease, Rocky Mountain spotted fever and others—some of which can be fatal. Some ticks can cause a “red-meat allergy” that leaves people violently ill after eating meat. The arachnids transmit disease to livestock and wildlife, and can cause direct harm such as anemia and reduced growth. A related consequence among livestock is that when animals are infected, they may simply spend less time eating because they’re dealing with irritation from tick bites.

“If the animal is spending all its time rubbing ad scratching and licking because it’s irritated, there are effects on growth because it’s eating less,” Owen said.

The findings suggest that the natural immune response might be replicated through the development of a vaccine. Such an effort would require more research, and the new study points to several areas where more research is needed, including how quickly animals develop anti-tick resistance and how long it lasts. But the paper’s findings shed new light on what drives tick populations—adding to a body of research that has so far focused more on the effects of weather and other “abiotic” factors in the environment.

“This phenomenon of acquired tick resistance has the potential to play a really profound role in governing tick population dynamics,” Owen said.

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Journal

Ticks and Tick-borne Diseases

DOI

10.1016/j.ttbdis.2025.102460 

Method of Research

Experimental study

Subject of Research

Animals

Article Title

Linked empirical studies reveal the cumulative impact of acquired tick resistance across the tick life cycle

 

Origin of life twist: New study challenges longstanding hypothesis on how first sugars formed

Scripps Research and Georgia Institute of Technology scientists’ discovery could help understand how life evolved on Earth and lead to better biofuel production.

Scripps Research Institute

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image: 

During the formose reaction, formaldehyde molecules (red) spontaneously and repeatedly react with each other to create larger molecules. Scripps Research scientists show that this reaction does not result in the production of linear sugars, like ribose (pink), which are the essential building blocks of life.

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Credit: Scripps Research

LA JOLLA, CA—The prebiotic Earth was a harsh and unstable environment, characterized by intense heat, active volcanoes and little atmosphere. How, then, did the molecular building blocks of life first form? Among chemists, it’s widely thought that one of these building blocks—a sugar known as ribose, which forms the backbone of RNA—was produced spontaneously. But a new study suggests otherwise.

Scripps Research and Georgia Institute of Technology scientists call this commonly held hypothesis into question in Chem on April 23, 2025. According to the “formose reaction” hypothesis, formaldehyde molecules spontaneously reacted to create ribose. But using controlled reactions, the researchers have now found the formose reaction can only produce sugars with branched structures—not linear sugars like ribose that are essential for life. These insights can help scientists understand how life arose on Earth, as well as design biofuel production.

“The concept of the formose reaction as a prebiotic source of ribose needs serious reconsideration,” says corresponding author Ramanarayanan Krishnamurthy, professor of chemistry at Scripps Research. “Other models and options should be explored if we want to understand how these sugar molecules arose on early Earth.”

The formose reaction was serendipitously discovered in 1861 and has been a leading hypothesis for prebiotic sugar formation ever since. During the reaction, formaldehyde molecules spontaneously and repeatedly react with each other to create larger molecules: first two formaldehydes react to create a two-carbon molecule, which then reacts with another formaldehyde to create a three-carbon molecule, and so on and so on, until all the formaldehyde has been used up.

The reaction is slow to begin but then accelerates uncontrollably. As more and more complex sugars are made, the reaction mixture turns from colorless, to yellow, to brown, to black. “It's almost like caramelization,” says Krishnamurthy.

“The problem is it's a very messy reaction, and if ribose is formed at all, it's a minuscule part and only one among hundreds and thousands of compounds that will be formed,” says Krishnamurthy. “We wanted to understand why this reaction is so complex, and whether it can be controlled.”

Usually, the formose reaction is conducted at high temperatures and in a very basic environment (at a high pH of 12 or 13). In this case, the researchers decided to test the reaction under milder conditions: at room temperature and at a pH of around 8, which they say is likely to be closer to the conditions present on prebiotic early Earth. To monitor the abundance and types of sugars produced, they used a high-powered analytical technique known as nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy and labeled the starting molecules. The mixture was monitored over several days.

They showed that the reaction is possible even under mild conditions, but that the results are just as complex and uncontrollable as usual.

“The reactivity of formaldehyde doesn't allow you to stop at a particular stage,” says Krishnamurthy. “Even with very mild reaction conditions it goes on until all of the formaldehyde is consumed, which means it’s very difficult to control or stop the reaction in order to form intermediate sugars.”

The NMR data revealed that all of the larger sugars produced had branched structures. Since almost all of the sugars that are used as molecular building blocks in living organisms are linear and unbranched, this suggests that the formose reaction cannot explain the origins of biotic sugars.

“Our results cast doubt on the formose reaction as the basis for the formation of linear sugars,” says co-senior author Charles Liotta, Regents' Professor Emeritus of the Georgia Institute of Technology.

Though the study’s mild reaction conditions failed to create the linear sugars necessary to explain the origins of RNA, the methods could be useful for the biofuel industry, where branched sugars are a desirable commodity.

“Our work might be helpful for biofuel production, since we found that with milder conditions, we can more cleanly produce branched sugars that can be used for green fuel,” says Krishnamurthy.

This isn’t necessarily the end for origins of life research on the formose reaction, but the researchers hope to spur different lines of thinking.

“Our goal was to point out all the problems that you will face if you are thinking about the formose reaction in the context of the prebiotic sugar synthesis, but we aren’t saying this is the endpoint; our results might inspire somebody to come up with a better way to somehow overcome these issues,” says Krishnamurthy. “We encourage the community to think differently and search for alternative solutions to explain how sugar molecules arose on early Earth.”

In addition to Krishnamurthy and Liotta, authors of the study, “Abiotic aldol reactions of formaldehyde with ketoses and aldoses—Implications for the prebiotic synthesis of sugars by the formose reaction,” are Sunil Pulletikurti and Huacan Lin of Scripps Research; and Scot Sutton of the Georgia Institute of Technology.

This work was supported by the NASA Exobiology Program NNH20ZA001N-EXO Grant 20-EXO-0006.

About Scripps Research

Scripps Research is an independent, nonprofit biomedical institute ranked one of the most influential in the world for its impact on innovation by Nature Index. We are advancing human health through profound discoveries that address pressing medical concerns around the globe. Our drug discovery and development division, Calibr-Skaggs, works hand-in-hand with scientists across disciplines to bring new medicines to patients as quickly and efficiently as possible, while teams at Scripps Research Translational Institute harness genomics, digital medicine and cutting-edge informatics to understand individual health and render more effective healthcare. Scripps Research also trains the next generation of leading scientists at our Skaggs Graduate School, consistently named among the top 10 US programs for chemistry and biological sciences. Learn more at www.scripps.edu.

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Journal

Chem

DOI

10.1016/j.chempr.2025.102553 

Article Title

Abiotic aldol reactions of formaldehyde with ketoses and aldoses—Implications for the prebiotic synthesis of sugars by the formose reaction

Article Publication Date

28-Apr-2025

 

Billion-year-old impact in Scotland sparks questions about life on land

Curtin University

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image: 

The Stac Fada Member. 

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Credit: Picture: Tony Prave

New Curtin University research has revealed that a massive meteorite struck northwestern Scotland about 200 million years later than previously thought, in a discovery that not only rewrites Scotland’s geological history but alters our understanding of the evolution of non-marine life on Earth.

 

Previously believed to have occurred 1.2 billion years ago, the impact created the Stac Fada Member, a layer of rock that holds vital clues to Earth’s ancient past, including how meteorite strikes may have influenced the planet’s environment and life.

 

Lead author Professor Chris Kirkland, from Curtin’s Frontier Institute for Geoscience Solutions within the School of Earth and Planetary Sciences, said the research team used tiny zircon crystals as geological ‘time capsules’ to date the impact to 990 million years ago.

 

“These microscopic crystals recorded the exact moment of impact, with some even transforming into an incredibly rare mineral called reidite, which only forms under extreme pressures,” Professor Kirkland said.

 

“This provided undeniable proof that a meteorite strike caused the Stac Fada deposit.

 

“When a meteorite hits, it partially resets the atomic clocks inside the zircon crystals and these ‘broken timepieces’ are often unable to be dated but we developed a model to reconstruct when the disturbance occurred, confirming the impact at 990 million years ago.”

 

Professor Kirkland said this impact event occurred at a similar time to the emergence of some of the earliest freshwater eukaryotes, which are the ancient ancestors of plants, animals and fungi.

 

“The revised dating suggests these life forms in Scotland appeared at a similar time to a meteorite impact,” Professor Kirkland said.

 

“This raises fascinating questions about whether large impacts may have influenced environmental conditions in ways that affected early ecosystems.

 

“While the impact crater itself has yet to be found, this study has collected further clues that could finally reveal its location.

 

“Understanding when meteorite impacts occurred helps us explore their potential influence on Earth’s environment and the expansion of life beyond the oceans.”

 

The research was done in collaboration with NASA Johnson Space Center, University of St. Andrews, University of Portsmouth, and Carl Zeiss Microscopy Ltd.

 

The paper, ‘A one-billion-year-1 old Scottish meteorite impact,’ has been published in Geology and is available online here: https://doi.org/10.1130/G53121.1

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Journal

Geology

DOI

10.1130/G53121.1 

Method of Research

Imaging analysis

Subject of Research

Not applicable

Article Title

A one-billion-year-1 old Scottish meteorite impact,

Article Publication Date

28-Apr-2025