MSCI

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. As of 2023, funds worth over 13 trillion US$ were based on MSCI indices. History 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. 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. After Dow Jones started float weighting its index funds, MSCI followed. In 2004, MSCI acquired Barra, Inc., to form MSCI Barra. In mid-2007, parent company Morgan Stanley decided to divest MSCI. This was followed by an initial public offering of a minority of stock in November 2007. The divestment was completed in 2009. The company is headquartered in New York City. Some companies in MSCI's peer group includes Glass Lewis, Factset, Sovereign Wealth Fund Institute, and Standard & Poor's.