MSCI and MarketAxess Announce Strategic Collaboration on Liquid Fixed Income Indexes, Portfolio Construction Solutions, and ESG Data

NEW YORK, April 28, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- MSCI Inc. (NYSE: MSCI) and MarketAxess Holdings Inc. (Nasdaq: MKTX) have agreed to enter into a strategic collaboration to create innovative portfolio analytics solutions and co-branded fixed income indexes incorporating MarketAxess liquidity data.

MSCI plans to integrate MarketAxess’ AI-powered pricing and liquidity measures, including Relative Liquidity Score and Tradability, into MSCI’s portfolio construction analytics tools and its fixed income indexes. MarketAxess plans to leverage MSCI’s ESG ratings to identify and create more liquid and sustainable fixed income portfolios for its global institutional clients.

Henry Fernandez, Chairman and CEO of MSCI, said: “MSCI is committed to expanding and enhancing our fixed income solutions to reflect the increasingly complex needs of the institutional investment community. As bond markets continue to evolve beyond over-the-counter trading coupled with compressed management fees, investors seek to effectively analyze and index fixed income securities. MSCI’s strategic collaboration with MarketAxess will empower investors with portfolio analytics and index products, in addition to offering them tools and robust datasets in growing areas of interest, namely ESG.”

Rick McVey, Chairman and CEO of MarketAxess, added: “We have seen first-hand what the addition of actionable market data can do to improve trading efficiencies. This collaboration provides an opportunity to further enhance our mutual clients’ trading outcomes by enabling them to power their portfolio construction process with MSCI’s advanced analytics. As our clients reimagine the benefits of using electronic trading solutions, we see great value in using our proprietary liquidity data to enhance MSCI’s proprietary portfolio construction tools and market leading Index platform.”  

The strategic collaboration is subject to the execution of definitive agreements.

About MSCI Inc.

MSCI is a leading provider of critical decision support tools and services for the global investment community. With over 50 years of expertise in research, data, and technology, we power better investment decisions by enabling clients to understand and analyze key drivers of risk and return and confidently build more effective portfolios. We create industry-leading research-enhanced solutions that clients use to gain insight into and improve transparency across the investment process.

About MarketAxess

MarketAxess (Nasdaq: MKTX) operates a leading electronic trading platform that delivers greater trading efficiency, a diversified pool of liquidity and significant cost savings to institutional investors and broker-dealers across the global fixed-income markets. Nearly 1,900 firms leverage MarketAxess’ patented technology to efficiently trade fixed-income securities. MarketAxess’ award-winning Open Trading® marketplace is widely regarded as the preferred all-to-all trading solution in the global credit markets. Founded in 2000, MarketAxess connects a robust network of market participants through the full trading lifecycle, including automated trading solutions, intelligent data products and a range of post-trade services. Learn more at www.marketaxess.com and on Twitter @MarketAxess.

Media Inquiries
Melanie Blanco, MSCI	melanie.blanco@msci.com
Marisha Mistry, MarketAxess	mmistry@marketaxess.com

Forward-looking Statements and Notice

This press release contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Forward-looking statements relate to future events or performance and involve risks that may cause actual results or performance to differ materially and you should not place undue reliance on them. Risks that could affect results or performance are in MSCI’s Annual Report on Form 10-K for the most recent fiscal year ended on December 31 that is filed with the SEC. MSCI does not undertake to update any forward-looking statements.

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