When a man overseeing $5.7 trillion speaks, the global business community tends to listen. So when BlackRock founder Larry Fink, head of the world's largest asset management company, posted a letter to CEOs demanding greater attention to social impact, it sent shockwaves through corporations around the globe. In the letter, titled "A Sense of Purpose," Fink wrote, We … see many governments failing to prepare for the future, on issues ranging from retirement and infrastructure to automation and worker retraining. As a result, society increasingly is turning to the private sector and asking that companies respond to broader societal challenges. Fink's letter dropped just days before the 2018 World Economic Forum, an annual gathering of the global financial elite in Davos, Switzerland.