BlackRock mines social media for early Brexit steer

BERLIN, June 7 (Reuters) - BlackRock (Sao Paolo: BLAK34.SA - news) , the world's biggest asset manager, is looking to social media to help it figure out the likelihood of a Brexit with polls too close to call ahead of Britain's June 23 vote on its membership of the European Union.

The firm's 100-strong Scientific Active Equity team includes 20 people with a data science background and has mainly used Twitter (Xetra: A1W6XZ - news) to track general attention to the topic and activity in the 'Remain' and 'Leave' camps, a company spokesman said.

Rob Fairbairn, in charge of the firm's mutual fund businesses globally, told delegates at the Fund Forum conference in Berlin that all his team's efforts had yet to give a clear steer.

"There are a huge amount of people trying to work out the Brexit result, completely ignoring polls, looking at social media and trying to work that through... BlackRock's part of that process," Fairbairn told delegates.

"We're still trying to work out what's going to happen, by the way, but we're looking at a lot of different things," he added.

Polls continue to give a conflicting picture. According to two polls published in Tuesday's newspapers Britons narrowly favour remaining in the EU, in contrast to surveys released on Monday which showed the campaign for Brexit ahead. (Reporting by Simon Jessop; Editing by Alexandra Hudson)