When in 1996 Henry Fernandez asked Morgan Stanley’s investment bankers to estimate the value of its modest indexing joint venture with Capital Group, he was told that the division he ran was probably worth no more than $20m.
He believed this was far too pessimistic. The Mexico-born, Nicaragua-raised and US-educated financier had become enamoured with the technology world after doing an MBA at Stanford in the early 1980s, and thought the joint venture had the potential to become not just a provider of emerging market indices — its original purpose — but the Microsoft of the investment industry, supplying asset managers with tools and services they might need.
While it may lack Microsoft’s heft, today MSCI is an independent, publicly listed company valued at almost $20bn. This is thanks to the fact that it sits at the heart of some of the biggest trends reshaping global finance.