Six years ago, Wall Street and the City of London were consumed with “Goldman envy”.

Never mind the fact that Goldman was producing eye-popping profits, with returns on equity of 40 per cent at the peak. What fuelled that envy was that Goldman had the banking equivalent of the “it” factor (to use the phrase beloved by celebrity magazines). The smartest graduates wanted to work at Goldman, the savviest clients used its services and when senior public figures left office, they often jumped aboard, not just because its desks were paved with bonus gold, but because the company was at the centre of so much cutting-edge financial and policy innovation.

But is the “it” factor now stealthily passing from Goldman to companies such as BlackRock? That is one intriguing question running through my mind following this week’s news that Philipp Hildebrand, the former chairman of the Swiss National Bank, is becoming vice-chairman for BlackRock, based in Europe.