The world’s largest money manager has held preliminary talks with the Chinese tech giant over the past year on how to make BlackRock’s investment tools widely available in China. The two firms have also discussed co-developing software to sell to financial institutions. (Wall Street Journal)

Talking point: It’s still early days and these talks could fizzle—or the ongoing U.S.-China trade war could make a potential partnership moot. If they don’t, however, the potential upsides for both firms are considerable. For Tencent, a partnership could help it compete with Alibaba’s Ant Financial, which formed a partnership with Vanguard earlier this year. Tencent and Ant Financial are both looking to access a growing share of China’s fintech market. For BlackRock, the partnership would allow it access to that growing industry and put it on a path to fulfill long-stymied ambitions of capturing more of the Chinese market. In June, the money manager got permission to offer investment advisory services there. The real prize for BlackRock, however, is a green light to start selling mutual funds to Chinese consumers. Beijing has indicated it will allow foreign firms to start doing so as part of a broader opening-up for which the U.S. has been pushing.