MSCI

MSCI Inc.
Company type	Public company
Industry	Financial services
Founded	1968
Headquarters	New York City, United States
Products	Global equity, fixed income, and real estate indices; multi-asset portfolio analytics; ESG and climate finance products

MSCI Inc.—previously known as Morgan Stanley Capital International—is a U.S.-based financial services firm headquartered in New York City. MSCI specializes in offering a broad array of global equity, fixed income, and real estate indices, alongside tools for multi-asset portfolio analytics and products focused on ESG and climate finance. Among its most prominent indices are the MSCI World, MSCI Emerging Markets, and MSCI All Country World (ACWI).

Located at 7 World Trade Center in Manhattan, MSCI primarily generates revenue by licensing its indices to index funds and ETFs, which typically incur fees ranging from 0.02% to 0.04% of their assets under management. By 2025, assets valued at more than US$16.5 trillion were benchmarked against MSCI’s indices.

History

The origins of MSCI trace back to 1968 when Capital International introduced indices tracking global equity markets outside the United States. In 1986, Morgan Stanley acquired licensing rights to these indices and rebranded them as Morgan Stanley Capital International (MSCI) indices. Throughout the 1980s, MSCI’s indices established themselves as leading benchmarks internationally, competing with entities such as FTSE Group, Citibank, and Standard & Poor's. After Dow Jones adopted float-adjusted weighting, MSCI followed suit by implementing a similar approach.

In 2004, MSCI broadened its offerings by acquiring Barra, Inc., resulting in the creation of MSCI Barra. Morgan Stanley began divesting from MSCI in mid-2007, culminating in an initial public offering of a minority stake that November. The full separation was finalized in 2009. Headquartered in New York City, MSCI maintains a global operational footprint.

MSCI’s competitors include firms like Glass Lewis, Factset, Sovereign Wealth Fund Institute, and S&P, underscoring its significant role within the financial data and indexing sector.

Acquisitions

MSCI expanded its capabilities in 2010 by acquiring RiskMetrics Group, Inc. and Measurisk, enhancing its expertise in risk management solutions. This growth continued in 2012 with the purchase of Investment Property Databank, which bolstered its real estate data offerings.

Further strategic acquisitions followed: Investor Force from ICG Group in 2013; GMI Ratings in 2014 to deepen ESG investment analytics; and Carbon Delta, a Zurich-based climate change analytics company, in 2019 to align with sustainability trends.

In 2021, MSCI strengthened its commercial real estate data assets through acquiring Real Capital Analytics. Most recently, in August 2023, it completed the $697 million acquisition of Burgiss Group—a New Jersey–based provider specializing in private assets data—further solidifying its presence in private market data services.

Collaborations

In October 2021, MSCI entered into a licensing partnership with Cboe Global Markets to broaden its suite of options products and collaborate on additional initiatives.

In April 2022, MSCI joined forces with MarketAxess to combine MSCI’s ESG data with MarketAxess’ pricing and liquidity metrics within fixed income indices, thereby enriching portfolio construction through integrated data insights.

Indices

Since 1969, MSCI has been calculating its global equity indices, which include the MSCI World and MSCI EAFE indices. At the outset, MSCI incorporated eight distinct factors in the construction of its indices: momentum, volatility, value, size, growth, size nonlinearity, liquidity, and financial leverage.

Inclusion of Chinese A-shares

In 2018, MSCI introduced Chinese A-shares into its MSCI Emerging Markets Index, initially assigning them a 5% allocation. Despite concerns among investors regarding restricted access to financial audits and U.S. national security issues raised by officials such as Senator Marco Rubio, MSCI was the last major index provider to integrate these shares.

Reports suggested that the decision to include A-shares was partly driven by pressure from the Chinese government, which sought to promote Shanghai and Shenzhen as leading international financial hubs. MSCI’s CEO Henry Fernandez refuted claims of political interference, stating that the choice was based purely on market considerations. By March 2019, MSCI intended to raise the weighting of mainland Chinese shares to nearly 40% within its global emerging markets index.

In April 2020, then-President Donald Trump contemplated barring federal retirement plans from investing in funds tracking MSCI indices containing Chinese stocks. Subsequently, in December 2020, MSCI delisted seven Chinese companies from its indices following Executive Order 13959.

Although there were initial plans for full inclusion of A-shares, this objective had not been completely achieved by 2021.

A November 2022 report from Sheffield Hallam University and Hong Kong Watch identified at least thirteen firms within MSCI indices allegedly linked to forced labor and extensive surveillance of Uyghurs. In August 2023, the United States House Select Committee on Strategic Competition between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party initiated an inquiry into MSCI’s investments in China, concluding that MSCI directed $3.7 billion toward entities on U.S. blacklists during 2023.

External links