Company type | Public |
---|---|
Founded | 1968 |
Headquarters | , United States |
Key people | |
Services | |
Revenue | US$2.53 billion (2023) |
US$1.38 billion (2023) | |
US$1.15 billion (2023) | |
Total assets | US$5.52 billion (2023) |
Total equity | US$−740 million (2023) |
Number of employees | 5,794 (2023) |
Website | www |
Footnotes /references [1] |
MSCI Inc. is an American finance company headquartered in New York City. MSCI is a global provider of equity, fixed income, real estate indices, multi-asset portfolio analysis tools, ESG and climate products. It operates the MSCI World, MSCI All Country World Index (ACWI) and MSCI Emerging Markets Indices among others.
The company is headquartered at 7 World Trade Center in Manhattan, New York City, U.S. Its business primarily consists of licensing its indices to index funds (ETF), which pay a fee of around 0.02 to 0.04 percent of the invested volume for the use of the index. [2] As of 2023, funds worth over 13 trillion US$ were based on MSCI indices. [3]
In 1968, Capital International published indices covering the global stock market for non-U.S. markets. In 1986, Morgan Stanley licensed the rights to the indices from Capital International and branded the indices as the Morgan Stanley Capital International (MSCI) indices. [4] By the 1980s, the MSCI indices were the primary benchmark indices outside of the U.S. before being joined by FTSE, Citibank, and Standard & Poor's. [5] After Dow Jones started float weighting its index funds, MSCI followed. [5] In 2004, MSCI acquired Barra, Inc., to form MSCI Barra. [6] In mid-2007, parent company Morgan Stanley decided to divest MSCI. [7] This was followed by an initial public offering of a minority of stock in November 2007. [8] The divestment was completed in 2009. [9] The company is headquartered in New York City. [10]
Some companies in MSCI's peer group includes Glass Lewis, Factset, Sovereign Wealth Fund Institute, and S&P.
In 2010 MSCI acquired RiskMetrics Group, Inc. [11] and Measurisk. [12]
In 2012 MSCI acquired Investment Property Databank. [13]
In 2013, MSCI acquired Investor Force from ICG Group (formerly Internet Capital Group). [14]
In August 2014, MSCI acquired GMI Ratings. [15]
In October 2019, MSCI acquired Carbon Delta, a Zurich-based climate change analytics company. [16]
In September 2021, MSCI acquired Real Capital Analytics. [17]
In August 2023, MSCI completed the acquisition of New Jersey-based private assets data provider, Burgiss Group for $697 million. [18]
In October 2021, MSCI and Cboe Global Markets signed a licensing agreement that would see MSCI grow its options product suite and allow them to work on other projects as well. [19] [20]
In April 2022, MSCI entered into a collaboration with MarketAxess on fixed income indices[ clarification needed ], portfolio construction solutions[ clarification needed ], and ESG data[ clarification needed ], using MSCI's ESG data and MarketAxess' pricing and liquidity indicators. [21] [22] [23] [24] [25]
The MSCI global equity indices have been calculated since 1969 and include MSCI World [26] and MSCI EAFE. [27] Initially, the company used eight factors in developing its indices: momentum, volatility, value, size, growth, size nonlinearity, liquidity, and financial leverage. [28]
In 2018 MSCI announced it would begin including mainland Chinese "A" shares in its MSCI Emerging Markets Index. Initially the domestic Chinese companies received a 5% weighting in the index. MSCI is the last major index provider to include the companies, but some investors have questioned the risk as many Chinese listed companies refuse to permit the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board to inspect their financial records. The action of including Chinese stocks into MSCI EM Index also received criticism and questions from Senator Marco Rubio and some others regarding the U.S. national security. [29] [30] [31] [32]
In February 2019, The Wall Street Journal reported the decision was the result of pressure from the Chinese government according to people familiar with the matter. [33] The New York Times reported that "The Chinese government long sought MSCI inclusion because it could help establish Shanghai and Shenzhen as global financial centers." [34] MSCI chief executive and chairman Henry Fernandez stated there was "zero politics" behind the decision. [32] In March 2019, CNBC reported that MSCI have a future plan of inclusion based on market capitalization of mainland Chinese shares in its global benchmarks, [35] which will eventually lead to ca. 40% weights of its global emerging markets index. [36] [37]
In April 2020, it was reported that Donald Trump was considering an executive action to prohibit the Thrift Savings Plan from transferring $50 billion to mirror the MSCI All Country World Index fund. [38] In December 2020, MSCI announced that it would strip its indices of seven Chinese companies in response to Executive Order 13959. [39] [40]
Although the A share full inclusion plan was noted by investors years ago, it still has not been realized as of 2024. [41]
In November 2022, a study by Sheffield Hallam University and Hong Kong Watch identified three major stock indices provided by MSCI that include at least 13 companies allegedly involved in forced labor and mass surveillance of Uyghurs. [42]
In August 2023, the United States House Select Committee on Strategic Competition between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party announced an investigation into MSCI's investments in China. [43] The committee concluded that MSCI channeled $3.7 billion into blacklisted entities in 2023. [44]
The Standard and Poor's 500, or simply the S&P 500, is a stock market index tracking the stock performance of 500 of the largest companies listed on stock exchanges in the United States. It is one of the most commonly followed equity indices and includes approximately 80% of the total market capitalization of U.S. public companies, with an aggregate market cap of more than $43 trillion as of January 2024.
The Vanguard Group, Inc., is an American registered investment advisor based in Malvern, Pennsylvania, with about $7.7 trillion in global assets under management, as of April 2023. It is the largest provider of mutual funds and the second-largest provider of exchange-traded funds (ETFs) in the world after BlackRock's iShares. In addition to mutual funds and ETFs, Vanguard offers brokerage services, educational account services, financial planning, asset management, and trust services. Several mutual funds managed by Vanguard are ranked at the top of the list of US mutual funds by assets under management. Along with BlackRock and State Street, Vanguard is considered to be one of the Big Three index fund managers that play a dominant role in corporate America.
An emerging market is a market that has some characteristics of a developed market, but does not fully meet its standards. This includes markets that may become developed markets in the future or were in the past. The term "frontier market" is used for developing countries with smaller, riskier, or more illiquid capital markets than "emerging". As of 2006, the economies of China and India are considered to be the largest emerging markets. According to The Economist, many people find the term outdated, but no new term has gained traction. Emerging market hedge fund capital reached a record new level in the first quarter of 2011 of $121 billion. Emerging market economies’ share of global PPP-adjusted GDP has risen from 27 percent in 1960 to around 53 percent by 2013. The ten largest emerging economies by nominal GDP are 5 of the 10 BRICS countries along with Indonesia, Mexico, Poland, South Korea, and Turkey.
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BlackRock, Inc. is an American multinational investment company. It is the world's largest asset manager, with $10 trillion in assets under management as of December 31, 2023. Headquartered in New York City, BlackRock has 78 offices in 38 countries, and clients in 100 countries. BlackRock is the manager of the iShares group of exchange-traded funds, and along with The Vanguard Group and State Street, it is considered to be one of the Big Three index fund managers. Its Aladdin software keeps track of investment portfolios for many major financial institutions and its BlackRock Solutions division provides financial risk management services. The head of Aladdin is Sudhir Nair. As of 2023, BlackRock was ranked 229th on the Fortune 500 list of the largest United States corporations by revenue.
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A frontier market is a term for a type of developing country's market economy which is more developed than a least developed country's, but too small, risky, or illiquid to be generally classified as an emerging market economy. The term is an economic term which was coined by International Finance Corporation’s Farida Khambata in 1992. The term is commonly used to describe the equity markets of the smaller and less accessible, but still "investable" countries of the developing world. The frontier, or pre-emerging equity markets are typically pursued by investors seeking high, long-run return potential as well as low correlations with other markets. Some frontier market countries were emerging markets in the past, but have regressed to frontier status.
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MarketAxess Holdings Inc. (MarketAxess) is an international financial technology company that operates an electronic trading platform for the institutional credit markets, and also provides market data and post-trade services. It enables institutional investors and broker-dealers to trade credit instruments, including corporate bonds, and other types of fixed income products.
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