Morgan Stanley Already Filing To Lower MSCI Stake (MXB, MS)

MSCI Inc. (NYSE: MXB) has filed to sell up to 30,861,235 shares in a secondary offering.  Unfortunately, all of the shares are from selling holders.  Those selling holders are Morgan Stanley (NYSE: MS) and Capital Group International, Inc, so none of the sold shares will go to MSCI’s coffers.

MSCI is provider of investment decision support tools to investment institutions.  It produces index and risk and return portfolio analytics for use in managing investment portfolios, which are used by institutions in equity, fixed income and multi-asset class instruments.

Based on yesterday’s prices of $27.01 in the filing, this would allow a sale of up to $833 million.  Its market cap is $2.85 Billion as a reference to the size of the potential securities sale.  Shares closed at $28.49 yesterday and the trading range since its November 2007 IPO is $22.06 to $38.40.

Morgan Stanley is the majority owner, hence the MSCI name.

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Jon C. Ogg
April 11, 2008

Jon Ogg produces the Special Situation Investing Newsletter.  He can be reached at [email protected] and he does not own securities in the companies he covers.