Morningstar Scores with Acquisition

I am a big fan of Morningstar (MORN) and have been one for a while. That is the company and not the stock! I do kind of like their stock now too and added it to my watchlist after the big meltdown. I think the company is unique and has done some very good things, one of which is the acquisition of CRSP, which they just closed recently. Today, they announced the completion of the rebranding of CRSP market indices to Morningstar Market Indexes.

Amelia Furr is the person at Morningstar who has been driving this effort, and the press release allowed her to weigh in:

We are excited to bring the highly respected CRSP Market Indexes, now with the added power of the Morningstar brand, to investors worldwide. These benchmarks help play an important role in the investment ecosystem and being part of Morningstar creates new opportunities to expand their reach. As demand grows for transparent, investor-focused and scalable benchmark solutions, we believe we are uniquely positioned to serve a broader set of client needs across asset management, wealth management, and capital markets and expand to serve new client use cases such as derivatives.

Amelia Furr, President of Morningstar Indexes

She took this role on in January and started working at Morningstar six years ago, according to her LinkedIn profile. The CRSP acquisition was announced in February. She has worked at several places, including MSCI and the London Stock Exchange (which owns Russell Investments).

I follow 88 ETFs right now, and just a few of them are managed against a CRSP index. They are all managed by a little company called Vanguard! There are several funds at Vanguard that use what is now known as Morningstar (formerly CRSP), including a big one that I track, Vanguard Total Stock Market Index ETF (VTI). I have no problem with the fund, per se, but I explained why I don't like it right now in February. I do like Vanguard a lot!

I like a lot of things about Morningstar, and I like ETFs as an investment type. Partnering with Vanguard in this way makes Morningstar even more special in my view.