Directors' College 2023
Henry A. Fernandez, MBA ’83
Chairman and CEO, MSCI
As MSCI’s Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Henry Fernandez has led the firm for almost three decades to its position today as a premier provider of indexes and portfolio-construction and risk management tools, as well as environmental, social, and governance (ESG) and climate data and research. MSCI is an S&P 500 company that is listed on the New York Stock Exchange. It has revenues of over USD 2.2 billion and a market cap of over USD 40 billion. In 2019 and 2021, Mr. Fernandez was one of 30 executives named in the Barron’s list of the World’s Best CEOs.
Headquartered in New York, and with close to 5,000 employees in more than 20 countries, MSCI is a central connecting point for the global investment industry. MSCI’s clients are the world’s largest investors, including pension funds, sovereign wealth funds, insurance companies, asset managers, mutual funds, ETF providers, hedge funds, and banks. The firm has pursued a successful growth strategy, both organically and through the acquisition of market-leading brands such as Barra, RiskMetrics, and Real Capital Analytics, and by developing an integrated set of industry-standard offerings to meet the rapidly changing needs of sophisticated global investors.
Prior to becoming CEO, Mr. Fernandez was a Managing Director at Morgan Stanley, where he worked in emerging-markets business strategy, equity derivatives sales and trading, mergers and acquisitions, mortgage-backed securities, and corporate finance. Prior to Morgan Stanley, he was President of the private-equity firm HispaniMedia, Inc., and founded Ferco Partners, Inc., a private-equity investment firm in Mexico. He was also a diplomat at the Nicaraguan Embassy in Washington, D.C.
Mr. Fernandez serves on the boards of directors/trustees of Royalty Pharma plc, Stanford University, King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, the Hoover Institution, the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, the Foreign Policy Association, and Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of New York.
Previously, he served on the boards of trustees at Georgetown University, the Trinity School, the Browning School, and MexDer (Mexican Derivatives Exchange), and he was Chair of the Advisory
Council at the Stanford University Graduate School of Business.
Mr. Fernandez holds a BA degree in economics from Georgetown University and an MBA from Stanford University, and he pursued doctoral studies in economics at Princeton University. He was born in Mexico and grew up in Nicaragua, and now lives in New York City with his wife. They have three children.
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