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BlackRock CEO Mark Weidman will depart, in a move that disrupts the asset manager’s planning for the eventual departure of founder Larry Fink, according to four people close to the company.

Weidman has been widely discussed as a potential successor to Where are you for more than a decade and most recently was one of the $11.5 trillion asset manager’s most prominent public faces as head of its client business.

Black RockBlackRock’s board of directors described him in a regulatory filing last year as one of three “senior leaders who we believe will play critical roles in BlackRock’s future” as it gave him a special retention package.

However, Weidman, who led the integration and rapid growth of BlackRock’s flagship index and exchange-traded fund businesses, chose not to wait. The sources said that his departure is expected to be announced very soon. He’s losing $8 million on stock options, according to the agent.

Weidman’s departure comes after the world’s largest asset management company embarked on a $28 billion acquisition last year to strengthen its presence in the fast-growing and lucrative alternative assets sector. These strategic moves not only pressured Fink, 72, to personally oversee their success, but also brought in a group of highly influential and highly paid executives who needed to be carefully managed.

Fink, who has led BlackRock since its founding in 1988, is popular among investors and is among the most influential figures in finance. But analysts and some inside the company I started voicing concerns Whether the slow pace of succession planning will prompt the next generation of top talent to start going elsewhere remains to be seen. BlackRock CEO Rob Capito, 67, is also one of the company’s founders.

BlackRock declined to comment.

Weidman departs nearly a year after Salim Ramji, another executive once touted as a potential leader. Ramji became CEO of Vanguard, BlackRock’s main competitor in the US and the world’s second-largest asset manager. Several other lower-ranking executives have also left in the past few years to take leadership jobs at smaller companies, including Danielle Gamba at Northern Trust and Zach Buchwald at Russell Investments.

After Ramji’s departure, the group touted its strong stable of existing leaders, including Weidman and two other executives who also received special options grants: Chief Operating Officer Robert Goldstein and Chief Financial Officer Martin Small.

“BlackRock is proud to have a record of our firm’s graduates leading multiple investment management firms and financial institutions,” she previously said.

“Larry,” said a senior Wall Street figure familiar with the situation [Fink] And Rob [Kapito] They won’t go anywhere. They just made a big acquisition and you have to see that through, [but] “Weidman is at the age where if he doesn’t make a move, he’ll be done with being a CEO.”

Weidman, a lawyer by training, joined BlackRock in 2004 after stints at the US Treasury and McKinsey. He created BlackRock’s financial markets advisory arm, which helped central banks and government agencies excavate the rubble of the 2008 financial crisis.

Weidman negotiated the purchase and merger of Barclays Global Investors in 2009, a deal widely viewed as the most significant in BlackRock’s history. He then headed the resulting trading company iShares from 2011 to 2019 where it grew into a juggernaut in indexes and ETFs.

With a keen interest in talent development, Weidman hired or promoted several of BlackRock’s top executives, including Small and Rachel Lord, who heads the international business.