Professor Patrick Honohan:

But the contract, here we are. Okay so there is one section in the contract. Section six, next page: confidential information: all information regarding this agreement, parties, business and their subsidiaries and affiliates, the client data, any pre existing IPR, blah, blah, blah, shall be kept in confidence by each of the parties hereto. These confidentiality obligations shall not apply to information lawfully in the public domain. BlackRock acknowledges that it has been notified of its obligations under Section 33AK, as amended, and it undertakes to inform all respective employees, servants, agents and third party contractors.

And then it says in another section of the contract which is before that. It says, while BlackRock does not make a market in the assets covered by this agreement, BlackRock or its affiliates, for itself or on behalf of its clients, may own positions in such assets or the individual securities underlying them, whether long or short and BlackRock and its affiliates, for itself or on behalf of its clients, shall not be restricted from transacting in them. BlackRock shall ensure the precaution to safeguard against conflicts of interest including, but not limited to Chinese walls, shall be put in place internally.

So this apparently is the sort of standard contract that one would put in to protect against that. Is it a sufficient protection? Some people might argue that but it's as best as we can do.