Posted 1/25/2024, 2:21:46 PM
MSCI Chief Spent Career Providing Benchmarks, Now Aims to Shed Light on Shadowy Private Markets
- Henry Fernandez built MSCI into a major provider of stock market indices over 3 decades, embracing free-market capitalism after opposing Nicaragua's socialist revolution
- MSCI has over $15 trillion of assets benchmarked to its indices and enables $1.5 trillion of ETF assets linked to its indices
- MSCI is now trying to bring transparency to opaque private markets like private equity and private debt via benchmark indices
- Its private market data could eventually enable ETFs in areas like private credit if secondary trading markets develop
- Advances in blockchain tokenization could help trade private assets, which BlackRock's Larry Fink hinted could be "ETFed" with MSCI's help