filings.toolsItem 1. Business
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Item 1. Business
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Overview
For more than 40 years, MSCI’s research-based models and methodologies have helped the world’s leading investors build and manage better portfolios. Clients rely on our products and services for deeper insights into the drivers of performance and risk in their portfolios, broad asset class coverage and innovative research and can use our products to help design and implement their investment strategies. Our line of products and services includes indexes, analytical tools, data, real estate benchmarks and environmental, social and governance (“ESG”) research. MSCI serves 98 of the top 100 global asset managers, as ranked by P&I in December 2014. Our products and services address multiple markets, asset classes and geographies and are sold to a diverse client base, including asset owners, such as pension funds, endowments, foundations, central banks, family offices and insurance companies; institutional and retail asset managers, such as managers of pension assets, mutual funds, exchange traded funds (“ETFs”), real estate, hedge funds and private wealth; and financial intermediaries, such as banks, broker-dealers, exchanges, custodians and investment consultants. As of December 31, 2014, we had approximately 6,700 clients across 87 countries. We had offices in 35 cities in 22 countries to help serve our diverse client base, with 51.0% of our revenues coming from clients in the Americas, 36.5% in Europe, the Middle East and Africa (“EMEA”) and 12.5% in Asia and Australia. See “—Clients” below for an explanation of how we calculate our number of clients.
Our flagship products are the global equity indexes and ESG products marketed under the MSCI and MSCI ESG Research brands, the private real estate benchmarks marketed under the IPD brand, the portfolio risk and performance analytics covering global equity markets marketed under the Barra brand, the multi-asset class, market and credit risk analytics marketed under the RiskMetrics and Barra brands and the performance reporting products and services offered to the investment consultant community marketed under the InvestorForce brand. These investment decision support tools and products are used in many areas of the investment process, including portfolio construction and rebalancing, performance benchmarking and attribution, risk management and analysis, index-linked investment product creation, asset allocation, investment manager selection, investment research and assessment of social responsibility, environmental stewardship, the effects of climate change and corporate governance on investments.
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Our principal sales model is to license annual, recurring subscriptions to our products and services for use at specified locations, often by a given number of users or for a certain volume of services, for an annual fee paid up-front. For the year ended December 31, 2014, $801.2 million, or 80.4%, of our revenues was attributable to annual, recurring subscriptions. An additional $177.1 million, or 17.8%, of our revenues came from clients who use our indexes as the basis for index-linked investment products such as ETFs, passively managed funds and separate accounts. These clients commonly pay us a license fee for the use of our intellectual property based on the investment product’s assets. We also generated revenues from certain exchanges that used our indexes as the basis for futures and options contracts and paid us a license fee for the use of our intellectual property based on their volume of trades. We also received revenues from one-time fees related to customized reports, advisory and consulting services and from certain products and services that are designed for one-time usage. These amounts totaled $18.4 million, or 1.8% of our revenues, for the year ended December 31, 2014.
Company History
We were a pioneer in developing the market for global equity index products and began licensing our first equity index products in 1969. We were incorporated in Delaware in 1998 and until we became a public company in November 2007 our only two shareholders were Morgan Stanley and Capital Group International, Inc. (“Capital Group International”).
In June 2004, we acquired Barra, LLC (formerly Barra, Inc., “Barra”), a provider of portfolio risk analytics tools that launched its first risk analytics products in 1975, broadening our product range beyond index products.
In November 2007, we completed an initial public offering (“IPO”) of 16.1 million shares of our class A common stock. In connection with the IPO, we reclassified our outstanding common stock into shares of class A common stock and class B common stock and immediately following the IPO, Morgan Stanley and Capital Group International held 81.0 million and 2.9 million shares of our class B common stock, respectively. Morgan Stanley and Capital Group International converted and sold their remaining shares of our class B common stock in subsequent registered secondary equity offerings from May 2008 through May 2009. Although we began the transition to an independent, stand-alone public company at the time of our IPO in November 2007, we became a fully independent, stand-alone public company following the May 2009 secondary offering. At MSCI’s annual shareholders meeting held on May 2, 2012, the shareholders approved amendments to the MSCI Amended and Restated Certificate of Incorporation to (i) eliminate our authorized class B common stock, (ii) increase the total number of authorized shares of class A common stock by the aggregate number of shares of class B common stock being eliminated, (iii) rename our class A common stock as “common stock” and (iv) make certain other conforming changes.
In June 2010, we acquired RiskMetrics Group, LLC (formerly RiskMetrics Group, Inc., “RiskMetrics”), a leading provider of risk management and governance products and services, in a cash-and-stock transaction valued at $1,572.4 million. In addition to its risk management products and services, RiskMetrics owned ISS, a pioneer in the development of policy-based proxy voting recommendations. RiskMetrics acquired the Center for Financial Research and Analysis (“CFRA”), Innovest Strategic Value Advisors, Inc. (currently MSCI ESG Research Inc.,“MSCI ESG Research”) and KLD Research and Analytics, Inc. (“KLD”) in August 2007, March 2009 and October 2009, respectively. The acquisitions of these companies have permitted us to offer research and analysis products that provide our clients with research reports and analytical tools covering many investment criteria that we believe have become increasingly important to investors, including ESG products and services. On March 31, 2013, we completed the sale of the CFRA product line. On April 30, 2014, we completed the sale of ISS which, together with the CFRA product line, made up our Governance segment.
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In July 2010, we acquired Measurisk, LLC (“Measurisk”), a provider of risk transparency and risk measurement tools for hedge fund investors, to aid us in developing a broad platform and setting the standard for analyzing and reporting hedge fund risk in response to our clients’ demands for increasing levels of transparency from their hedge fund managers. Measurisk’s products and clients are part of our Hedge Fund Risk Transparency Solutions products.
In November 2012, we acquired real estate performance measurement group IPD Group Limited (“IPD”), a leading provider of real estate performance analysis for funds, investors, managers, lenders and occupiers that offers a wide range of services including research, real estate risk management and performance attribution tools, reporting, benchmarking and indexes. The acquisition of IPD expands MSCI’s multi-asset class offering by facilitating the integration of private real estate assets into our models, as well as adding a family of real estate indexes to MSCI’s family of equity indexes. Revenues attributable to IPD’s product offerings are included in our index, real estate and ESG products category.
In January 2013, we acquired Investor Force Holdings, Inc. (“InvestorForce”), a leading provider of performance reporting solutions to the institutional investment community in the United States, providing investment consultants with an integrated solution for daily monitoring, analysis of and reporting on institutional assets. Revenues attributable to InvestorForce’s product offerings are included in our risk management analytics products category.
In August 2014, we acquired Governance Holdings Co. (“GMI Ratings”), a provider of corporate governance research and ratings to institutional investors, banks, insurers, auditors, regulators and corporations seeking to incorporate ESG factors into risk assessment and decision-making. We believe this acquisition enhances our existing platform of ESG research and tools, allowing us to deliver a more comprehensive suite of ESG products and services to our clients. Revenues attributable to GMI Ratings product offerings are included in our index, real estate and ESG products category.
Over the course of more than 40 years, we believe our organization has accumulated an in-depth understanding of the investment process worldwide. Based on this wealth of knowledge, we have created and continue to develop, enhance and refine sophisticated tools to meet the growing, complex and diverse needs of our clients’ investment processes. Our models and methodologies are the intellectual foundation of our business and include the innovative algorithms, formulas and analytical and quantitative techniques that we use, together with market data, to produce our products. Our long history has allowed us to build extensive databases of proprietary index, risk and ESG data, as well as accumulate valuable historical market data, which we believe would be difficult to replicate and which provides us with a substantial competitive advantage.
Our revenues and the number of our employees have grown significantly, both organically and through acquisitions, such as those described above. As we have grown, we have increased our operations outside of the United States. We currently have branches or subsidiaries in the following locations: Australia, Brazil, Canada, Cayman Islands, Chile, China, England, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Hungary, India, Italy, Japan, Korea, Mexico, the Netherlands, the Philippines, Portugal, Scotland, Singapore, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, United Arab Emirates and the United States.
Products and Services
Prior to March 31, 2014, we reported our financial results for two segments: the Performance and Risk business and the Governance business. These designations were made as the discrete operating results of these segments were reviewed by our chief operating decision maker, or CODM, for purposes of making operating decisions and assessing financial performance. On March 17, 2014, MSCI entered into a definitive agreement to sell ISS, which, together with the CFRA product line disposed of in March 2013, made up our Governance segment. As a result, we began operating and reporting as a single reportable segment. On April 30, 2014, we completed the sale of ISS.
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Our performance and risk products include indexes, portfolio risk and performance analytics, multi-asset class market analytics, various real estate products and ESG products. We also have product offerings in the areas of energy and commodity asset valuation analytics. Our products are generally comprised of proprietary index data, proprietary risk and analytics data, proprietary real estate data and ESG ratings, analysis and research delivered via data feeds and proprietary software applications. Our indexes and risk data are created by applying our models and methodologies to market, company and fundamental data. For example, we input closing stock prices and other market data into our index methodologies to calculate our equity index data, and we input fundamental data and other market data into our risk models to produce risk forecasts for individual assets and portfolios of multiple asset classes, including equities, fixed income, commodities, foreign exchange, futures, options, derivatives, structured products, interest-rate products, credit products and private investments, such as private equity and private real estate. Our clients can use our data together with our proprietary software applications, third-party applications or their own applications in their investment process. Our software applications offer our clients sophisticated portfolio analytics to perform in-depth analysis of their portfolios, using our risk data, the client’s portfolio data and fundamental and market data. Our equity index products are typically branded “MSCI” and “MSCI ESG.” Our private real estate benchmarks and indexes are typically branded “IPD.” Our portfolio risk and performance analytics are typically branded “Barra” and “RiskMetrics.” Our performance reporting products and services offered to the investment consultant community are typically branded “InvestorForce.” In addition to MSCI ESG indexes, we offer other ESG products that are branded “MSCI ESG Research.” Our valuation models and risk management software for the energy and commodities markets are typically branded “FEA.”
Index, Real Estate and ESG Products
Our MSCI-branded global equity indexes are designed to measure returns available to investors across a wide variety of equity markets (e.g., Europe, Japan or emerging markets), sizes (e.g., small capitalization or large capitalization), styles (e.g., growth or value), industries (e.g., banks or media), strategies (e.g., factors) and themes (e.g., economic exposure). Our IPD benchmarks are designed to measure the performance and risk indicators of our clients against their peers. Our MSCI-branded ESG indexes are designed to help clients incorporate ESG factors into their investment processes. As of December 31, 2014, we calculated over 170,000 indexes daily.
In addition to delivering our products directly to our clients, as of December 31, 2014, there were more than 70 third-party financial information and analytics software providers that distributed our various equity index products worldwide. The performance of our equity indexes is also frequently referenced when selecting investment managers, assigning return benchmarks in mandates, comparing performance and providing market and academic commentary. The performance of certain of our equity indexes is reported on a daily basis in the financial media.
Our equity index products include:
| • | MSCI Global Equity Indexes. The MSCI Global Equity Indexes are our flagship index products. They are designed to measure returns available to global investors across a variety of public equity markets. As of December 31, 2014, the MSCI Global Equity Indexes provided broad equity market coverage for over 80 countries in our developed, emerging and frontier market categories, as well as various regional and composite indexes built from the component country indexes, including the MSCI EAFE, MSCI World, MSCI ACWI IMI and MSCI Emerging Market Indexes. In addition, the MSCI Global Equity Indexes include industry indexes, value and growth style indexes and large-, mid-, small- and micro-capitalization size segment indexes. |
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We believe that the MSCI Global Equity Indexes are the most widely used benchmarks for cross-border equity funds. Various pension plans have announced their adoption of one of our broadest equity indexes, MSCI ACWI IMI, as the policy benchmark for their equity portfolios. We also continue to enhance and expand successful product offerings as evidenced by the launch of new indexes (e.g., MSCI Liquid Real Estate Indexes, MSCI EM Horizon, MSCI All Market Indexes, MSCI Cyclical Sectors Indexes and MSCI Defensive Sectors Indexes) to be used as the basis for financial products such as ETFs.
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| • | MSCI Factor Indexes. The MSCI Factor Indexes seek to address an emerging trend among institutional investors whose asset allocation processes are gradually shifting from asset classes to risk groupings such as growth, income, inflation, volatility and liquidity. The MSCI Factor Indexes reflect the many equity return components that were once considered added value, or alpha, but that can be attributed to sources of systematic return such as value, size, quality, yield, volatility, or momentum. Today, MSCI offers a wide array of such factor or alternative beta indexes, including the MSCI Minimum Volatility, single high capacity factor indexes (e.g., MSCI Quality Tilt, Dividend Tilt, Size Tilt, Momentum Tilt, Volatility Tilt and Value Weighted Indexes) and high exposure factor indexes (e.g., MSCI Minimum Volatility, Enhanced Value, Equal Weighted and High Dividend Yield) as well as combinations of factor indexes, or multi-factor indexes such as the award-winning MSCI Quality Mix Indexes. |
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| • | MSCI Economic Exposure Products and Indexes. MSCI has launched economic exposure data modules to provide clients with a systematic framework for measuring global sources of revenue for each security across a portfolio or equity opportunity set. The economic exposure of companies can serve as a complementary or alternative definition of the country factor and can bring a new dimension to enhance and support the construction, evaluation and risk management of global equity portfolios. Also, the MSCI Economic Exposure Indexes, which reflect the performance of companies with significant economic exposure to specific regions or countries, may be relevant benchmarks for investors that face direct investment restrictions in certain markets or wish to increase their indirect allocations to targeted regions. |
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| • | MSCI Custom Indexes. In recent years we have significantly expanded our capabilities for calculating custom indexes. We currently calculate approximately 7,500 custom indexes, which apply a client’s customization criteria to an existing MSCI index. Examples of customization criteria include currency, hedging, stock exclusions or special weighting. Custom indexes can reflect specific investment criteria, such as socially responsible investment requirements or regulatory constraints; they can be used for back-testing strategies or developing specialized investment products, minimizing portfolio tracking error and constructing index-linked products. |
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| • | MSCI ESG Indexes. The MSCI ESG Indexes allow clients to effectively benchmark ESG investment performance and manage, measure and report on their compliance with ESG mandates, as well as to issue index-based ESG investment products such as ETFs. The MSCI ESG Indexes include Sustainability Indexes that integrate ESG ratings using a Best-in-Class selection process; SRI (Socially Responsible Investment) Indexes that take into account certain values, norms or ethical standards; Environmental Indexes, including Low Carbon and Fossil Fuels Exclusion Indexes, and benchmarks that focus on alternative energy or clean technology; and Custom Indexes based on clients’ ESG requirements. |
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| • | Global Industry Classification Standard (GICS®). GICS was developed and is maintained jointly by MSCI and Standard & Poor’s Financial Services, LLC, a subsidiary of The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. (“Standard & Poor’s”). This classification system was designed to respond to our clients’ needs for a comprehensive, consistent and accurate framework for classifying companies into industries. GICS is widely accepted as an industry analysis framework for investment research, portfolio management and asset allocation. Our equity index products classify constituent securities according to GICS. |
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We offer GICS Direct, a joint product of MSCI and Standard & Poor’s. GICS Direct is a database of approximately 44,000 active companies and more than 52,000 securities classified by sector, industry group, industry and sub-industry in accordance with proprietary GICS methodology.
Our ESG products include:
| • | MSCI ESG Research Products. MSCI ESG Research products and services help investors integrate ESG factors into their investment decisions. Investors integrate ESG factors to better understand investment risk and opportunities and/or to align investment with a set of ESG values. |
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MSCI ESG Research products include screening and modeling tools that allow institutional investors and asset managers to: align investments with a set of ESG values such as perceptions of certain business activities, religious views or international norms; generate buy/restricted lists of companies that meet those criteria; understand the implications of restrictions on portfolios; and examine company specific profiles. The tools also include the ability to monitor a company’s adherence to internationally recognized norms and principles.
MSCI ESG Research products also provide ESG ratings and analysis on thousands of companies worldwide. These industry based research reports are designed to identify and analyze key ESG issues for the industry, which may include the intersection of a corporation’s major social and environmental impacts with its core business operations, thereby identifying potential risks and opportunities for the company and its investors.
| • | MSCI ESG GovernanceMetrics. MSCI ESG GovernanceMetrics provides institutional investors with corporate governance research and data on over 6,000 public companies worldwide. Asset managers and asset owners can access company profiles, rankings and underlying governance and accounting metrics to satisfy client investment guidelines, enhance engagement activities, and manage potential portfolio risks. |
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Our real estate products include:
| • | Portfolio Analysis Service (“PAS”). PAS is a single platform for real estate risk management and performance attribution that analyzes the strengths and weaknesses of a real estate portfolio’s performance relative to its benchmark. PAS provides portfolio management tools that are designed to assist in building effective real estate portfolios, allowing users to gain additional portfolio insight to help them make informed investment decisions. Performance attribution enables users to analyze the sources of portfolio risk and return on an absolute or relative basis. PAS has led the way in providing real estate investors with a granular understanding of the exposures and returns of their real estate portfolio, from the building to the fund level. |
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IPD benchmarking services offer rental income, property management, fund level and cost benchmarking and analysis. IPD benchmarking services and analysis reports are made available through the IPD Reporting Portal, an online reporting platform with a high level of data security. Additionally, IPD market publications provide key real estate market analysis on countries, regions, cities and sectors that help investors understand key trends and returns in global real estate markets.
| • | IPD Global Intel. IPD Global Intel is an extensive global databank that equips asset owners, researchers, strategists and portfolio and risk managers with data analytics to enhance their understanding of local and regional real estate performance and risks. IPD Global Intel comprises a consolidated set of global, regional, national, city and submarket indexes with breakdowns by property type. Drawing from actual performance data on more than 1,500 funds and 79,000 real estate assets, IPD Global Intel provides investors and managers an authoritative view of market trends, as well as actionable information on property markets for more than 30 countries. |
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Risk Management Analytics Products
Our risk management analytics products offer a risk assessment framework for managing and monitoring investments in a variety of asset classes across an organization. The products are based on our proprietary integrated fundamental multi-factor risk models, value-at-risk (“VaR”) methodologies and asset valuation models. They enable clients to identify, monitor, report and manage potential market risks, and to analyze portfolios and systematically analyze risk and return across multiple asset classes, including equities, fixed income, commodities, foreign exchange, futures, options, derivatives, alternative and private asset classes, structured products, interest-rate products and credit products. Using these tools, clients can identify the drivers of market and credit risk across their investments, produce daily risk reports, run pre-trade analysis, perform what-if stress tests and simulation analysis and optimizations, evaluate and monitor multiple asset managers and investment teams and assess correlations across a group of selected assets or portfolios.
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Our risk management analytics products include:
| • | RiskManager. RiskManager is an industry leader in VaR simulation and stress testing. Clients use RiskManager for daily analysis, measuring and monitoring of market risk at fund and firm levels, sensitivity and stress testing, interactive what-if analysis, and counterparty credit exposure. RiskManager is a highly scalable platform accessed by clients via a license to a secure, interactive web-based application service, and is offered as an outsourced risk reporting service or as a web service in which a client’s systems access RiskMetrics’ core risk elements by connecting directly to our systems. |
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| • | BarraOne. BarraOne, powered by the Barra Integrated Model (“BIM”), provides clients with global, multi-asset class risk analysis using Barra’s fundamental factor methodology. BarraOne also includes VaR simulation, stress testing, optimization and performance attribution modules that enable clients to manage multi-asset class portfolios, carry out risk allocation budgeting, manager monitoring, performance attribution and regulatory risk reporting. The product is accessed by clients via a secure, interactive web-based session, web services or on an outsourced basis. |
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| • | Hedge Fund Risk Transparency Solutions. HedgePlatform, a reporting service, allows clients that invest in hedge funds, including funds of funds, pension funds and endowments, to measure, evaluate and monitor the risk of their hedge fund investments across multiple hedge fund strategies. We collect position-level information from hedge funds on a monthly basis and provide our clients with risk information for each individual hedge fund in which they invest as well as aggregate risk information for their overall portfolio of hedge funds. Our clients who use RiskManager to measure the risk of their own holdings can further integrate the positions collected via our HedgePlatform service to allow computation of risk across their entire portfolio, while the confidential and proprietary nature of the underlying hedge fund holdings is maintained. HedgePlatform reports include statistics such as exposure (e.g., long, short, net and gross), sensitivities, scenario analysis, stress tests and VaR analysis. |
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| • | WealthBench. WealthBench is an investment planning platform for private banks, financial advisors, brokerages and trust companies. WealthBench assists users in delivering informed, tailored investment planning proposals for high net worth individuals reflecting their needs, goals and risk tolerances while remaining consistent with firm-driven investment and risk-based policies. WealthBench incorporates robust analytics, market-consistent inputs and transparent methodologies. |
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| • | InvestorForce. Our InvestorForce products offer performance reporting solutions to the institutional investment community in the United States by providing investment consultants with an integrated solution for daily monitoring, analysis of and reporting on institutional assets. InvestorForce products also offer clients access via a web portal to their extensive database of information including portfolio analytics and transaction and holdings information, which is updated in real time as data is collected from custodial banks and fund managers. |
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| • | CreditManager. Our CreditManager product is a portfolio credit risk management system used primarily by banks to calculate economic capital, facilitate risk-based pricing and measure credit risk concentrations. The application is designed to consolidate and compare risks and opportunities across multiple credit exposures including bonds, credit derivatives and traditional lending. |
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| • | Energy and Commodity Analytics Products. Our energy and commodity analytics products comprise software applications that offer a variety of quantitative analytics tools for valuing, modeling and facilitating the hedging of physical assets and derivatives across a number of market segments including, primarily, energy and commodity assets. These products are used by investors, traders and those hedging investments in these asset classes. The software applications are not provided with any market data or proprietary index or risk data. These products are typically branded “FEA” and include products such as FEA@Energy, FEA VaRworks and FEA StructureTool. |
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Portfolio Management Analytics Products
Our Barra-branded equity portfolio management analytics products are designed to assist investment professionals in analyzing and managing risks and returns for equities at both the asset and portfolio level in developed, emerging and frontier equity markets. Barra equity models identify and analyze the factors that influence equity asset returns and risk. Our most widely used Barra equity products utilize our fundamental multi-factor equity risk model data to help our clients construct, analyze, optimize and manage portfolios. Our multi-factor models identify factors that influence stock price movements, such as industry and style characteristics, based on market and fundamental data. The proprietary risk data available in our products identify an asset’s or a portfolio’s sensitivities to these factors. Our innovative approach to risk modeling, Systematic Equity Strategies (“SES”), facilitates a rules-based implementation of investment strategies and anomalies. When used as a complement to traditional equity risk factors in risk models, SES can help better explain sources of risk and return.
Our global equity models include:
| • | Barra Global Equity Model (“GEM3”). GEM3 is a multi-factor risk model designed for use in global equity portfolio management and construction. It uses a set of factors that explain the sources of global equity risk and returns. |
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| • | Barra Integrated Model (“BIM”). BIM provides a detailed view of risk across markets and asset classes, including currencies, equities, fixed income assets, commodities, mutual fund assets and hedge fund assets. It begins by identifying the factors that affect the returns of many asset classes, including equity and fixed income securities and currencies. These factors are then combined into a single global model that can forecast the risk of multi-asset class global portfolios. |
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Our single country and regional risk models include:
| • | Barra Single Country Equity Models. Our single country equity models identify a set of factors to explain sources of risk and return of portfolios in that country. Examples include the Barra US Equity Model (“USE4”) which models risk for U.S. equity assets and portfolios and the Barra UK Equity Model (“UKE7”) which models risk for United Kingdom equity assets and portfolios. |
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| • | Barra Regional Equity Models. We produce regional equity models, including a North American Stochastic Model and a European Stochastic Model, the Europe Equity Model (“EUE4”) and two Asia-Pacific Equity Models (“ASE1” and “ASE2”). These models are designed to be used across a broad range of applications and are available in different versions to reflect local and regional commonalities, as well as short-term and long-term investment horizons. |
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When assigning investment mandates to asset managers, institutional asset owners often prescribe investment restrictions for portfolio risk and tracking error that are measured, reported and monitored using Barra products. Our clients can use our portfolio analytics by installing our proprietary software applications and equity risk data in their technology platforms, by accessing our software applications and risk data via the Internet, by integrating our equity risk data into their own applications or through third-party applications, like those provided by FactSet Research Systems Inc. (“FactSet”), which have incorporated our equity risk data and analytics into their offerings.
Our portfolio analytics products include:
| • | Barra Portfolio Manager. Barra Portfolio Manager is an integrated risk and performance platform that is designed to help fund managers and their teams gain additional portfolio insight, manage a more systematic investment process and make faster, more informed investment decisions. The hosted interactive user interface allows users to analyze risk and return, conduct pre-trade what-if analysis across a number of scenarios and construct portfolios using the Barra Optimizer. It also allows users to decompose the risk and attribute the return of their portfolios according to Barra models. The platform supports optional data management services that allow users to outsource the loading and reconciliation of their portfolio and other proprietary data. |
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| • | Barra Equity Models Direct. Barra Equity Models Direct delivers our proprietary risk data to clients for integration into their own software applications. The proprietary risk data in Barra Equity Models Direct is also available via third-party providers. We offer the proprietary risk data from global, regional and single country Barra risk models and most of these models are available in short-term and long-term time horizons so that clients can select the risk data that best suits their investment processes. |
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| • | Barra Aegis. Barra Aegis is a sophisticated software application for equity risk management and portfolio analysis that is powered by our proprietary equity risk data. It is deployed by the client as a desktop application. Barra Aegis offers an integrated suite of equity investment analytics modules, specifically designed to help clients actively manage their equity risk against their expected returns. It also enables clients to construct optimized portfolios based on client-specified expectations and constraints. |
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Growth Strategy
We believe we are well-positioned for growth over time and have a multi-faceted growth strategy that builds on our strong client relationships, products, brands and integral role in the investment process. Set forth below are the principal elements of our strategy to grow our Company and meet the increasing needs of our clients for investment decision support tools:
| • | Client Growth. We believe there are opportunities to increase the number of users and locations and the number of products we license to existing client organizations, and to obtain new clients in both existing and new geographic markets and client types worldwide. We intend to: |
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| • | Increase product subscriptions within our current client base. Many of our clients use only a limited number of our products, and we believe there are opportunities to sell additional modules and capabilities to our existing clients. We believe our deep knowledge of our clients and our familiarity with their investment processes enable us to license these additional products to our clients. |
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| • | Expand our client base. We seek to add new clients by increasing our sales efforts and by leveraging the increased marketing investments made during 2014. In recent years we have expanded our geographic presence to take advantage of the liberalization of markets in additional countries. For example, we opened new sales and client coverage offices in Santiago, Chile, Seoul, Korea and Taipei, Taiwan and expanded our sales presence in China and the Middle East. In 2014, we also significantly increased the number of client coverage personnel in the Philippines and India. We believe that these efforts have positioned us to continue to leverage our brand strength, product reach and access to the global investment community to attract new clients. |
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During 2014, we expanded our dedicated sales efforts with respect to new client segments, including smaller asset managers and hedge funds, financial advisors and insurance firms. We also focused on developing new products to meet their needs. We believe that these investments will enable us to continue to grow our client base within these client segments.
| • | Increase licensing of indexes for ETFs and other exchange traded investment products. We believe that there is potential for continued growth and expansion in the ETF market in the future, and we will continue to pursue opportunities to increase licensing of our indexes for index-linked investment products to capitalize on their growth in number and variety. The table below illustrates the growth trend with respect to the number of exchange listings of ETFs linked to MSCI equity indexes. |
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| Number of Exchange Listings of ETFs Linked to MSCI Equity Indexes | ||||||||||||
| As of | ||||||||||||
| Region | December 31, 2014 | December 31, 2013 | December 31, 2012 | |||||||||
| Americas | 239 | 190 | 186 | |||||||||
| EMEA | 409 | 381 | 365 | |||||||||
| Asia | 39 | 36 | 30 | |||||||||
| Total | 687 | 607 | 581 | |||||||||
Historical values of the assets in ETFs linked to our indexes are set forth in a table under Part II, Item 7. “Management’s Discussion and Analysis—Results of Operations—Year Ended December 31, 2014 Compared to the Year Ended December 31, 2013—Operating Revenues” below.
| • | Product Development. We plan to develop new product offerings and continue to enhance our existing products. Much of our product development is based on an ongoing and active dialogue with clients, which helps us to understand their needs and anticipate market developments. We intend to: |
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| • | Create innovative new product offerings and enhancements. In order to maintain and enhance our leadership position, we are focused on introducing innovative new products and enhancements to existing products. We believe that the integration of product platforms, research, including the development of new models, enhanced client customization capabilities, and the introduction of new ESG products will increase our competitiveness. For example, we have enhanced MSCI’s risk and performance management analytics products by integrating ESG data and real estate information into these products. |
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| • | Execute on investments to expand our capacity to design and develop new products. During 2014, pursuant to our enhanced investment plan, we increased our investment in product development teams, new model research, data production systems, technology infrastructure and software application design to enable us to design and develop new products more quickly and cost-effectively over time. Further increasing our ability to process additional models and data, and design and code software applications more effectively, will allow us to respond faster to client needs and bring new products and product enhancements to the market more quickly. |
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| • | OneMSCI strategy. MSCI clients are increasingly asking for more integrated and effective ways to manage performance and risk throughout their investment process. Our OneMSCI strategy will make it easier for them to select tools from our full product line that precisely fit their needs. We believe this strategy will continue to lead to greater efficiencies and innovation and generate additional revenue through higher retention rates and new sales. We have experienced recent success with our Factor Indexes, which are created by applying research insights from our portfolio management analytics product line to our equity indexes. During 2014, we also began focusing more efforts on offering integrated solutions by combining the way that we offer equity portfolio management capabilities and risk management analytics capabilities in order to target front and middle office functions within each client. In order to maximize the operating efficiencies offered by our OneMSCI strategy, we recently announced combined reporting lines for our risk management analytics and portfolio management analytics product lines. We believe that the initiatives we are pursuing through our OneMSCI strategy will prove beneficial to both MSCI and our clients and underlie our client growth and product development initiatives discussed above. |
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| • | _Growth through acquisition_s. We intend to continue to seek to acquire products, technologies and companies, such as IPD, InvestorForce and GMI Ratings, that will enhance, complement or expand our product offerings and client base, as well as increase our ability to provide investment decision support tools to equity, fixed income and multi-asset class investment institutions, and the financial intermediaries that service such institutions. |
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Competitive Advantages
We believe our competitive advantages include:
| • | Strong client relationships and deep understanding of client needs. Our consultative approach to product development, dedication to client support and our range of products have helped us build strong relationships with investment institutions around the world. We believe the skills, knowledge and experience of our research, applications development, global sales, data management and production and product management teams enable us to develop and enhance our models, methodologies, data and software applications in accordance with client demands and needs. We consult with our clients and other market participants during the product development process to take into account their actual investment process requirements. Additionally, many members of our product-building teams are former market participants who have been in the client’s position. For the year ended December 31, 2014, we had an Aggregate Retention Rate of 93.0%. See Part II, Item 7. “Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations—Key Financial Metrics and Drivers—Operating Metrics—Retention Rates” for the definition of Aggregate Retention Rate and more detailed retention rate data. |
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| • | Client reliance on our products. Many of our clients have come to rely on our products in their investment management processes, integrating our products into their performance measurement and risk management processes, where these products become an integral part of our clients’ daily portfolio management functions. In certain cases, our clients are requested by their customers to report using our tools or data. Additionally, our tools can help clients comply with local regulations or client reporting requirements. Consequently, we believe that certain of our clients may experience business disruption and additional costs if they choose to cease using or replace our products. |
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| • | Strong brand recognition. Our global equity indexes and ESG products and services are marketed under the MSCI, MSCI ESG Research and MSCI ESG GovernanceMetrics brands; our portfolio risk and performance analytics covering global equity markets are marketed under the Barra brand; our multi-asset class, market and credit risk analytics are marketed under the RiskMetrics and Barra brands; our performance reporting products and services offered to the investment consultant community are marketed under the InvestorForce brand; our energy and commodity asset valuation analytics are marketed under the FEA brand; and our private real estate benchmarks are marketed under the IPD brand. These brands are well-established and recognized throughout the investment community worldwide. Our brand strength reflects the longstanding quality and widespread use of our products. We believe our products are well-positioned to be the tools of choice for investment institutions increasingly looking to third-party products and services for help with benchmarking, index-linked product creation and portfolio and multi-asset class market risk management. |
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| • | Global products and operations. Our products cover most major investment markets throughout the world. For example, our MSCI Global Equity Indexes provide broad equity market coverage for over 80 countries in our developed, emerging and frontier market categories; and we produce equity risk data for single country models, regional equity models and an integrated multi-asset class risk model covering equity markets and fixed income markets. As of December 31, 2014, our clients were located in 87 countries and many of them have a presence in multiple locations around the world. As of December 31, 2014, our employees were located in 22 countries in order to maintain close contact with our clients and the international markets we follow. We believe our global presence and focus allow us to serve our clients well and capitalize on a great number of business opportunities in many countries and regions of the world. |
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| • | Sophisticated models with practical application. We have invested significant time and resources for more than three decades in developing highly sophisticated and practical index methodologies and risk models that combine financial theory and investment practice. We enhance our existing |
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| models to reflect the evolution of markets and to incorporate methodological advances into risk forecasting. New models and major enhancements to existing models are reviewed by our model review committee. |
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| • | Open architecture and transparency. We have an open architecture philosophy aimed at increasing data access and integration features in our products and services. Clients can access our data through our software applications, third-party applications or their own applications. We also recognize that the marketplace is complex and that a competitor in one context may be a supplier or distributor in another context. For example, Standard & Poor’s competes with us in index products, supplies index data that we distribute in our portfolio analytics software products and jointly developed and maintains GICS and GICS Direct with us. In order to provide transparency, we document and disclose many details of our models and methodologies to our clients so that they can better understand and utilize the tools we offer. Consistent with our open architecture approach, we believe this transparency benefits us and our clients. |
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| • | Scalable application platforms. We will continue to invest in our data centers, technology platform and software products to provide highly scalable solutions for the processing of large volumes of asset and portfolio data. In doing so, we are able to offer clients computing capacity that they would otherwise not be able to access in a cost-effective manner through internal development. |
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| • | Highly skilled employees. Our workforce is highly skilled, technical and, in some instances, specialized. In particular, our research and software application development departments include experts in advanced mathematics, statistics, finance, portfolio investment and application development, who combine strong academic credentials with market experience. Our employees’ experience and knowledge give us access to, and allow us to add value at, the highest levels of our clients’ organizations. |
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| • | Extensive historical databases. We have accumulated extensive databases of historical global market data, proprietary equity index data, private real estate benchmark data, risk data and ESG data. We believe our substantial and valuable databases of proprietary index and risk data, including over 40 years of certain index data history, nearly 40 years of certain risk data history and over 13 years of certain historical governance data, would be difficult and costly to replicate. The information is not available from any single source and would require intensive data checking and quality assurance testing that we have performed over our many years of accumulating this data. Historical data is a critical component of our clients’ investment processes, allowing them to research and back-test investment strategies and analyze portfolios over many investment and business cycles and under a variety of historical situations and market environments. |
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Clients
For the year ended December 31, 2014, we served approximately 6,700 clients across 87 countries worldwide, with 51.0% of revenues coming from clients in the Americas, 36.5% in EMEA and 12.5% in Asia and Australia. Our clients include asset owners such as pension funds, endowments, foundations, central banks, family offices and insurance companies; institutional and retail asset managers, such as managers of pension assets, mutual funds, ETFs, real estate, hedge funds and private wealth; and financial intermediaries such as banks, broker-dealers, exchanges, custodians and investment consultants. To calculate the number of clients, we may count certain affiliates and business units within a single organization as separate clients. For example, the asset management and broker-dealer units of a diversified financial services firm may be treated as separate clients, even though the financial services firm is the only party to the applicable subscriptions or licenses.
Our Aggregate Retention Rates were 93.0% and 91.5% for the years ended December 31, 2014 and 2013, respectively. Our Core Retention Rates were 93.2% and 91.8% for the years ended December 31, 2014 and 2013, respectively. For a description of the calculation of our Aggregate and Core Retention Rates, see Part II, Item 7. “Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations—Key Financial Metrics and Drivers—Operating Metrics—Retention Rates” below.
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Revenues from our ten largest clients contributed a total of 25.8%, 25.1% and 27.0% of our total revenues for the years ended December 31, 2014, 2013 and 2012 respectively.
In the years ended December 31, 2014, 2013 and 2012, our largest client organization by revenue, BlackRock, Inc. and its affiliates (“BlackRock”), accounted for 10.6%, 9.7% and 8.5% of our operating revenues, respectively. For the years ended December 31, 2014, 2013 and 2012, 92.1%, 89.1% and 84.0%, respectively, of our revenues from BlackRock were attributable to fees based on the assets of ETFs linked to MSCI equity indexes, including its iShares ETF business.
Marketing
We market our products to asset owners, chief investment officers, active and passive portfolio managers, ETF providers, and chief risk officers around the world. See “—Clients” above. Our research and product management teams seek to understand our clients’ investment processes and needs in order to design tools that help clients understand the dimensions of performance and risk in their portfolios and make better-informed investment decisions.
Members of our research team and other employees regularly speak at industry conferences, as well as at our own events. For example, we hosted over 625 seminars, webinars, conferences and workshops in various locations across the globe in fiscal 2014. These seminars, webinars, conferences and workshops bring our staff and our clients together, expose those clients to our latest research and product enhancements and give our staff an opportunity to gain insight into our clients’ needs. Our marketing professionals also arrange interviews for our industry and product experts in prominent financial and trade media and issue press releases from time to time on client wins, new research and product developments. We also communicate directly with both clients and prospective clients through our email newsletters which deliver research, company news and product specific news and through our public website and client portals. Our marketing department collaborates with our product specialists to analyze our clients’ use of our products and to analyze the competitive landscape for our products. We also supplement these direct marketing efforts with targeted online advertising and co-branding initiatives with some of our major clients.
Sales and Client Support
As of December 31, 2014, our client coverage offices included approximately 250 sales people and 330 client support people worldwide. Of these, over 95 were located in our New York offices and over 80 were located in our London office. In the last few years we have expanded our sales efforts to increase our revenues and our client service efforts to ensure client satisfaction and develop client loyalty. In recent years, for example, we have opened new sales and client coverage offices in Santiago, Chile, Seoul, Korea and Taipei, Taiwan and expanded our sales presence in China and the Middle East. In 2014, we also significantly increased the number of client coverage employees in the Philippines and India. We have also created more specialized sales and client support teams to increase our impact in each client segment, namely hedge funds, asset owners, financial advisors, private wealth managers and broker dealers. In the Americas, we also increased our focus on smaller asset managers and hedge funds, financial advisors and insurance firms. Our sales and client support staff are based in 30 offices around the world enabling us to provide valuable face-to-face client service and focus efforts on developing new clients in more locations.
The sophisticated nature of our products and their uses demand a sales and client support staff with strong academic and financial backgrounds. Most new sales require several face-to-face meetings with the prospective client and the sales process for large and complex sales is likely to involve a team from sales, client support, product management and research. For Barra and RiskMetrics branded products, sales and client support personnel are available to onboard new clients and new users, which includes, providing intensive on-site training in the use of the models, data and software applications underlying each product. Client support also provides ongoing support, which may include on-site visits, telephone and e-mail support 24 hours, five days a week and routine client support needed in connection with the use of the product or how it can help clients
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improve their process, all of which are included in the recurring subscription fee. We believe that the size, quality, knowledge and experience of our sales and client support staff, as well as their proximity to clients, differentiate us from our competitors.
Product Development and Production
We take a coordinated team approach to product development and production. Our product management, research, data operations and technology and application development departments are at the center of this process. Despite the challenging market environment, we remained committed to our product development and production efforts and, in some cases, increased these efforts.
Utilizing a deep understanding of the investment process worldwide, our research department develops, reviews and enhances our various methodologies and models. Our global data operations and technology team designs and manages our processes and systems for market data procurement, proprietary data production and quality control. Our application development team builds our sophisticated software applications. As part of our product development process, we also commonly undertake extensive consultations with our clients and other market participants to understand their specific needs and investment process requirements. Our product management team facilitates this collaborative product development and production approach. The roles and functions of our product development and production teams include:
| • | Research. Our models are developed by a cross-functional research team of mathematicians, economists, statisticians, financial engineers and investment industry experts. Our index and risk and analytics research departments combine extensive academic credentials with broad financial and investment industry experience. They work on both developing new models and methodologies and enhancing existing ones. We monitor investment trends and their drivers globally, as well as analyze product-specific needs in areas such as capitalization-weighted, factor and specialized indexes, as well as instrument valuation, risk modeling, portfolio construction, asset allocation and value-at-risk simulation. An important way we monitor global investment trends and their implications for our business is through the forum provided by our Editorial Advisory Board (“EAB”). Our EAB, which was established in 1999, meets twice a year and is comprised of senior investment professionals from around the world and senior members of our performance and risk research team. In 2014, our index and portfolio and risk analytics researchers participated in numerous industry events and conferences, and their papers have been published in leading academic and industry journals. They also play a leading role in many of the seminars, workshops and webinars we host throughout the year, presenting and discussing their latest research findings with both clients and prospective clients. |
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| • | Data Operations and Information Technology. Our data operations and technology teams consist of a combination of operations and information technology specialists. We licensed a large volume and variety of market data for every major market in the world, including fundamental and return data, from more than 200 third party sources in 2014. We apply our models and methodologies to this market data to produce our proprietary risk and index data. Our data operations team oversees this complex process. Our experienced information technology staff builds proprietary software and databases that house all of the data we license or produce in order for our data operations team to perform data quality checks and run our data production systems. Our software and data resides on servers, networks and databases engineered and managed by our IT Infrastructure team, and operated and monitored by our IT Operations team. This technology suite resides in our global data centers in Nevada, U.S. and Geneva, Switzerland. Our data factory produces our proprietary index data such as end of day and real time equity indexes, ESG indexes, real estate benchmarks, and our proprietary risk data such as daily and monthly equity risk forecasts, IPD performance and risk reporting and MSCI ESG Research reports. We have data operations and technology offices in North America, Europe and Asia. |
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| • | Application Development. Certain of our proprietary risk data are made available to clients through our proprietary software applications, such as Barra Aegis, BarraOne, RiskManager, HedgePlatform, WealthBench, Credit Manager and ESG Manager. Our application development team consists of individuals |
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| with significant experience in both the finance and software industries. Our staff has an extensive skill set, including expertise in both the Java-based technologies used in our web-based, on-demand software application tool for multi-asset class risk analysis and reporting and Microsoft-based technologies used in our desktop equity and fixed income analytics software products. We also have extensive experience with database technologies, computational programming techniques, scalability and performance analysis and quality assurance. We use a customized software development methodology that leverages best practices from the software industry, including agile programming, test-driven development, parallel tracking, iterative cycles, prototyping and beta releases. We build our software applications by compiling multiple components, which enables us to reuse designs and codes in multiple products. Our software development projects involve extensive collaboration with our product management team and directly with clients. We have application development offices in the United States, Europe and Asia. |
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Our Competition
Many industry participants compete with us by offering one or more similar index products. Such products vary widely in scope, including by geographic region, business sector and risk category. Competitors in this business include FTSE International, Ltd. (a subsidiary of The London Stock Exchange Group PLC (the “LSE”)), Russell Investments (a subsidiary of the LSE), S&P Dow Jones Indices LLC (a joint venture company owned 27% by CME Group, Inc. and CME Group Services LLC and 73% by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.), the Center for Research in Securities Prices (CRSP), EDHEC-Risk Institute, NYSE Euronext, DAX, STOXX Ltd., Bovespa, the Korea Stock Exchange, China Securities Index Co., Ltd., the Hang Seng Index, a strategic partnership between CME Group and Singapore Exchange Limited, Research Affiliates LLC, Morningstar, Inc., Nikkei Inc., Nomura Securities, Ltd., and the Tokyo Stock Exchange, Inc. There are also many smaller companies that create indexes primarily for use as the basis of ETFs. In addition, some investment institutions such as Wisdom Tree have created their own index products.
Our portfolio analytics products compete with offerings from a wide range of competitors, including Advanced Portfolio Technologies (a unit of SunGard), Axioma, Inc., Bloomberg Finance L.P., Capital IQ’s ClariFI (a Standard & Poor’s business), FactSet, Northfield Information Services, Inc. and Wilshire Analytics.
Our risk management analytics products compete with offerings from firms such as Algorithmics (a unit of IBM), Axioma, Barclays Capital, BlackRock Solutions, Bloomberg Finance L.P., FactSet, Imagine Software, KMV (a unit of Moody’s Corporation), State Street Analytics and SunGard Data Systems Inc. Additionally, many of the larger broker-dealers have developed proprietary risk management analytics tools for their clients. Similarly, many investment institutions, particularly the larger global organizations, have developed their own internal risk management analytics tools.
We also have a variety of competitors for our other products that comprise a smaller portion of our revenues.
Intellectual Property and other Proprietary Rights
We consider many aspects of our products, processes and services to be proprietary. We have registered, among others, “MSCI,” “Barra,” “RiskMetrics,” “InvestorForce,” “IPD” and “FEA” as trademarks or service marks in the United States and in certain foreign countries. We will continue to evaluate the registration of additional trademarks, service marks and copyrights as appropriate. From time to time, we also file patent applications to protect our proprietary rights. We currently hold 23 U.S. and foreign patents and have four U.S. patents pending. Additionally, many of our products, processes and services require the use of intellectual property obtained from third parties. It may be necessary in the future to seek or renew licenses relating to various aspects of our products, processes and services.
Although we believe the ownership of such patents, copyrights, trademarks, service marks, the implementation of certain measures to protect our intellectual property and proprietary rights and our ability to obtain the rights to use intellectual property of third parties are important to our business and contribute in part to
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our overall success, we do not believe we are dependent on any one of our intellectual property rights or any one license to use third party intellectual property. For a description of the risks associated with legal protection of our intellectual property and other rights, infringement claims and the ability to obtain or renew licenses for third party intellectual property, see Part I, Item 1A. “Risk Factors—Legal Protections for our intellectual property rights and other rights may not be sufficient or available to protect our competitive advantages. Third parties may infringe on our intellectual property rights, and third-party litigation may materially adversely affect our ability to protect our intellectual property rights” below.
Employees
We had 2,926 employees as of December 31, 2014 and 2,580 employees not related to the ISS operations as of December 31, 2013. As of December 31, 2014, 50.5% of our employees were located in emerging market centers compared to 46.2% of our employees, excluding those who left as part of the ISS disposition, as of December 31, 2013.
Government Regulation
The Company is subject to reporting, disclosure and recordkeeping obligations pursuant to SEC requirements. MSCI ESG Research Inc. is a registered investment adviser and must comply with the requirements of the Investment Advisers Act of 1940 and related SEC regulations. Such requirements relate to, among other things, disclosure obligations, recordkeeping and reporting requirements, marketing restrictions and general anti-fraud prohibitions. A subsidiary of MSCI ESG Research Inc. must comply with the applicable Australian Financial Services Authority. MSCI registered in 2012 with the State Council Information Office of the Ministry of Commerce and the State Administration for Industry and Commerce in China as a foreign institution supplying financial information services in China.
Available Information
Our corporate headquarters are located at 7 World Trade Center, 250 Greenwich Street, New York, New York, 10007, and our telephone number is (212) 804-3900. We maintain a website on the Internet at www.msci.com. The contents of our website are not a part of or incorporated by reference in this Annual Report on Form 10-K.
We file annual, quarterly and current reports, proxy statements and other information with the SEC. You may read and copy any materials we file with the SEC at the SEC’s Public Reference Room at 100 F Street, N.E., Washington, D.C. 20549. You may obtain information about the operation of the Public Reference Room by calling the SEC at 1-800-SEC-0330. The SEC maintains an Internet website that contains reports, proxy and information statements and other information that we file electronically with the SEC at www.sec.gov. We also make available free of charge, on or through our website, these reports, proxy statements and other information as soon as reasonably practicable following the time they are electronically filed with or furnished to the SEC. To access these, click on the “SEC Filings” link found on our Investor Relations homepage (http://ir.msci.com).
We also use our Investor Relations homepage and corporate Twitter account (@MSCI_Inc) as channels of distribution of Company information. The information we post through these channels may be deemed material. Accordingly, investors should monitor these channels, in addition to following our press releases, SEC filings and public conference calls and webcasts. In addition, you may automatically receive email alerts and other information about us when you subscribe to the notification service available through our website by visiting the “Email Alert Subscription” section at http://ir.msci.com/alerts.cfm?. The contents of our website and social media channels are not, however, a part of or incorporated by reference in this Annual Report on Form 10-K.
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