market folly

Jeff Ubben's activist investment firm ValueAct Capital has filed a Form 4 and 13D with the SEC regarding their stake in MSCI (MSCI).  Per the Form 4, ValueAct sold 255,000 shares on November 5th at $68.83, another 762,000 shares on November 6th at $68.11, and another 815,000 shares on November 9th at $66.45.

After these sales, ValueAct still owns over 7.47 million shares of MSCI, or 7.3% of the company.  The firm's 13D filing also noted this about their sale:

"(ValueAct has) sold the securities of the Issuer reported in Item 5 herein as part of their standard ongoing process of portfolio management.  D. Robert Hale, a partner of ValueAct Holdings and ValueAct Holdings GP, will continue to serve on the board of directors of the Issuer and currently intends to stand for reelection at the Issuer's 2016 annual meeting."

We've posted previous portfolio activity from ValueAct Capital here.


Per Google Finance, MSCI is "together with its wholly owned subsidiaries, is a provider of investment decision support tools, including indexes, portfolio risk and performance analytics and multi-asset class market risk analytics products and services. The Company’s products include global equity indexes and environmental, social and governance (ESG) products marketed under the MSCI and MSCI ESG Research brands, its private real estate benchmarks marketed under the IPD brand, its portfolio risk and performance analytics covering global equity markets marketed under the Barra brand, its multi-asset class, market and credit risk analytics marketed under the RiskMetrics and Barra brands and its performance reporting products and services offered to the investment consultant community marketed under the InvestorForce brand."