Larry Fink, 61, tall and outgoing and passionate about his business, is the chairman, CEO, and co-founder of the largest asset-management company in the world, BlackRock.

On the rare occasions when my family talked about business, the subject was Kansas City's Boss Pendergast and his potential for muscling my dad's small gravel-and-sand operation.

From the minute I got to 'Fortune,' I loved my job. I knew myself to be a virtual dunce about business, and I was wide-eyed about how much I was learning.

Throughout his remarkable business and government career, Robert Rubin, now 65, has both worked exhaustively at reaching well-founded conclusions and rejected the idea that anything - and he means anything - can be a 'provable certainty.'

If a company's stock is undervalued - as many managers believe theirs is - a repurchase may offer the best payoff of all.

There is a certain oddity to Larry Fink having problems in Washington. He is a strong Democrat who has close ties to President Obama and has often been rumored as set to take a big administration job, such as Secretary of the Treasury.