New York, June 1, 2010
We are delighted to announce today that MSCI Inc. has completed its acquisition of RiskMetrics Group, Inc., a leading provider of risk management and corporate governance products and services to the global financial community. The combined company will be known as MSCI Inc. and will market its products and services under its various well-known brands, including MSCI, RiskMetrics, Barra, ISS, CFRA and FEA. The mission of the new MSCI is to continue to deliver world-class, mission-critical investment decision support tools to a broad variety of financial institutions worldwide.
Our combined product offering - from equity indices to multi-asset class risk management solutions and portfolio management systems to proxy advisory services to forensic accounting to energy and commodity analytics - will help our clients make more informed decisions throughout their investment processes. With over 2000 employees in 19 countries, our combined company will have a unique global breadth and depth to provide first-class research, products and services.
With respect to our risk product offerings, we believe the combination of Barra’s expertise in equity portfolio risk models and analytics, and RiskMetrics’ powerful multi-asset class risk management platform, will create a comprehensive portfolio risk management offering that will provide our clients with a seamless view of risk across the entire front and middle office. Over a period of a few years, after extensive client consultation to avoid any lapse in functionality and minimize any disruption, we will merge our BarraOne and RiskManager offerings into a single multi-asset class risk and performance system. In the meantime we will continue to invest in, sell and support both BarraOne and RiskManager.
Our corporate governance product offering will be marketed under the well-known ISS brand once again. Our Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) business will be combined with our MSCI business and marketed under the MSCI brand. The corporate governance and ESG businesses are extremely exciting, and present interesting new opportunities for growth and expansion.
Our immediate focus is on continuing to provide the highest quality products and client service to our clients, and on delivering our previously communicated road map of product enhancements.
We are extremely excited about the possibilities this transaction creates, and we look forward to providing our clients with industry-leading research, products and services to support their investment processes.
For more information on RiskMetrics please visit www.riskmetrics.com
Henry Fernandez
Chairman and CEO
MSCI Inc.
