Henry A. Fernandez
President and Chief Executive Officer
MSCI Barra
Henry Fernandez is president and CEO of MSCI Barra, a company with approximately 600 employees located in 14 countries, providing investment performance benchmark indices and risk management analytics to more than 3,000 clients worldwide. He was instrumental in the design and execution of MSCI's acquisition of Barra in 2004 and in the merger of MSCI with Capital International Perspective S. A. In 1998.
Prior to becoming president and CEO of MSCI, Mr. Fernandez was a managing director in the institutional equity division of Morgan Stanley. In this capacity, he was responsible for coordinating the division's emerging markets equity products worldwide. Mr. Fernandez also has worked in various areas of Morgan Stanley, including mergers and acquisitions and corporate finance worldwide in the investment banking division and mortgage finance for U.S. financial institutions in the fixed-income division.
From 1993 to 1994, Mr. Fernandez was president of HispaniMedia, Inc., a private equity investment firm in Hispanic media 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 Nicaragua Embassy in Washington, D.C.
Mr. Fernandez is a member of the college board of advisors of Georgetown University and a trustee of the board of the Browning School in New York City.
He was born in Mexico City and grew up in Nicaragua, Central America. He lived in Geneva, Switzerland, and has traveled extensively to over 80 countries. He graduated with a BA degree in economics from Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. in 1979. He received an MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business in 1983 and pursued doctoral studies in economics at Princeton University.
He resides in New York City with his wife and their three children.
