BlackRock is facing a new lawsuit alleging it stiffed a former worker out of $12.4 million – and the case could force the asset manager to reveal its secretive pay package structure, The Post has learned.
Neal Dignum, a former director in BlackRock’s Long Term Private Capital fund, is accusing BlackRock of failing to pay a single cent of the carried interest it promised him as part of his pay package, according to documents filed in New York State Supreme Court Monday.
During his time at the company, from November 2021 to February 2023, BlackRock deliberately never put pen to paper to create a promised compensation agreement with Dignum, his lawyers alleged.
“Mr. Dignum has for years now been deprived of the compensation BlackRock promised to pay him,” Lauren Zimmerman, partner at Benesch Friedlander Coplan & Aronoff LLP, told The Post in a statement.
“BlackRock decided it did not want to keep its end of the bargain it struck, even after aggressively courting my client for months. We look forward to fully and openly vindicating his rights in Court.”
BlackRock did not immediately respond to The Post’s request for comment.
The complaint in the case contains an offer letter and a term sheet from BlackRock that broke down the details of the carried interest the firm promised to pay him, “as a means of inducing him to accept the Firm’s offer,” according to a memorandum.
Carried interest is a share of an investment fund’s profits that is typically paid to hedge fund managers as a performance incentive.
It often makes up the bulk of their salary, accounting for at least 84% of managing partners’ total compensation on average, according to a 2021 survey by Heidrick & Struggles. Among partners at larger firms, that share can jump to well over 90%.
The complaint is currently sealed because Dignum fears BlackRock will file a retaliatory counterclaim against him, citing the firm’s “signature aggression,” since he signed a stringent NDA as part of his employment agreement, court filings alleged.
BlackRock’s employee NDA is “extremely broad in scope,” his lawyers argued in the filing.
Dignum wants the details of his lawsuit to be made public, so he is requesting BlackRock be ordered to come to court if it wants anything permanently sealed or redacted, the memorandum said.
To keep the complaint permanently sealed from the public, BlackRock would need to argue that it contains “trade secrets, confidential business information, or proprietary information,” the filing said – and if it fails to do so, its compensation structure could be revealed in court.
BlackRock has been in possession of a draft of Dignum’s complaint for nearly three months and has yet to respond in any way, the filings alleged.
The sealed complaint also contains information about “the approximate growth of the LTPC fund during Mr. Dignum’s tenure,” the filing said. The fund began winding down in 2024, so the details should not be held from the public, it argued.
BlackRock, which is based in New York City, is the world’s largest asset manager with over $15.3 trillion in assets under management.
Additional reporting by Peter Senzamici
