Henry A. Fernandez is Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of MSCI Inc., a publicly traded company (NYSE: MSCI) and a leading global provider of investment decision tools, including indexes and portfolio risk and performance analytics. MSCI has over 3,000 institutional clients in over 80 countries, and about 3,000 professionals located in 24 countries. In 2015, MSCI had revenues of over $1 billion and has a market capitalization of over $8 billion.
Prior to becoming Chief Executive Officer of MSCI in 1998, Mr. Fernandez was a managing director at Morgan Stanley, where he worked from 1983 to 1991 and from 1994 to 1998. During his tenure at Morgan Stanley, he worked in corporate finance, mergers and acquisitions, fixed income sales and trading, equity derivatives sales and trading, and corporate development in emerging markets. From 1993 to 1994, Mr. Fernandez was president of HispaniMedia, Inc., a private equity investment firm in the United States. He also founded Ferco Partners, Inc., a private equity investment firm in Mexico, and served as its Chairman and President from 1991 to 1993. From 1976 to 1979, Mr. Fernandez was a diplomat in the Nicaraguan Embassy in Washington, D.C.
Mr. Fernandez currently serves on the board of directors of Stanford University, Georgetown University, the Hoover Institution, the Foreign Policy Association, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, The Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of New York, the American Nicaraguan Foundation, and he is a member emeritus of the Georgetown University College Board of Advisors. Previously, he served on the boards of directors of The Trinity School and The Browning School in New York, and MexDer (Mexican Derivatives Exchange) and is the former Chairman of the Advisory Council of the Stanford University Graduate School of Business.
Mr. Fernandez graduated summa cum laude with a bachelor’s degree in economics from Georgetown University in 1979 and pursued doctoral studies in economics at Princeton University from 1979 to 1981. He received an MBA from Stanford University in 1983. He was born in Mexico City and grew up in Nicaragua, Central America. He has lived and worked in Latin America, Europe and the US, and has visited close to 100 countries. He resides in New York City with his wife and their three children.