MSCI Appoints Remy Briand to Lead the Firm’s ESG and Real Estate Product Lines

MSCI Inc. (NYSE:MSCI) announced today that Remy Briand, Managing Director and Global Head of Research, has been appointed to lead the firm’s ESG (environmental, social and governance) and Real Estate product lines. Mr. Briand will continue to report to Baer Pettit, Chief Operating Officer, in his expanded role.

“Our ESG and Real Estate product lines are key elements of our growth strategy,” said Mr. Pettit, “and we are fortunate to have someone with Remy’s knowledge and skills to lead them. Remy’s long-term relationships with our clients, his deep knowledge of the investment process, and his hands-on understanding of our product, technology and data platforms make him uniquely well qualified for this role.”

In addition to his new product responsibilities, Mr. Briand continues to lead a global team of more than 150 researchers who develop insights and design products and services that help institutional investors make more informed investment decisions. He is responsible for research across all MSCI products, including indexes, risk models and ESG ratings.

In 2010, Mr. Briand led the restructuring of the ESG businesses acquired through RiskMetrics. MSCI ESG Research was created with a mission to help investors integrate ESG factors into their investment processes. As head of index research from 2007 to 2014, Mr. Briand initiated an innovation program that led to the creation of frontier market indexes, minimum volatility indexes and a full range of factor indexes.

Prior to joining MSCI in 2001, Mr. Briand was an equity portfolio manager and head of research at Credit Lyonnais Asset Management in Paris. He began his career as a private equity analyst at Credit Lyonnais. He holds an MSc in Computer Sciences from INSA (Lyon) and an MBA from HEC (Paris).

“I am tremendously excited about having an opportunity to lead and grow these strategically important product lines,” said Mr. Briand. “Institutional investors are increasingly integrating ESG considerations into their mainstream investment strategies, and the growth in real estate investing is being driven by institutionalization and globalization of real estate as an asset class. These trends are creating enormous opportunities for MSCI.”

Eric Moen, Product Manager for MSCI ESG Research, and Jim Valente, Product Manager for MSCI Real Estate, will report to Mr. Briand.

About MSCI

For more than 40 years, MSCI’s research-based indexes and analytics have helped the world’s leading investors build and manage better portfolios. Clients rely on our offerings for deeper insights into the drivers of performance and risk in their portfolios, broad asset class coverage and innovative research.

Our line of products and services includes indexes, analytical models, data, real estate benchmarks and ESG research.

MSCI serves 97 of the top 100 largest money managers, according to the most recent P&I ranking.

For more information, visit us at www.msci.com.

Forward-Looking Statements

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Other factors that could materially affect actual results, levels of activity, performance or achievements can be found in MSCI's Annual Report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2015 filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission ("SEC") on February 27, 2016, as amended, and in quarterly reports on Form 10-Q and current reports on Form 8-K filed with the SEC. If any of these risks or uncertainties materialize, or if our underlying assumptions prove to be incorrect, actual results may vary significantly from what MSCI projected. Any forward-looking statement in this press release reflects MSCI's current views with respect to future events and is subject to these and other risks, uncertainties and assumptions relating to MSCI's operations, results of operations, growth strategy and liquidity. MSCI assumes no obligation to publicly update or revise these forward-looking statements for any reason, whether as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise, except as required by law.

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