As President, Baer Pettit oversees the Company’s business functions, including client coverage, marketing, product management, research, technology and operations.

Baer is an Executive Officer of the firm as well as a member of MSCI’s Executive Committee. Before taking on his current role in October 2017, he served as Chief Operating Officer. In this role Baer was responsible for oversight of the development, operations and profitability of the firm’s full product line, which includes index, analytics, ESG and real estate products.

Prior to being Chief Operating Officer, Baer held a number of senior management positions at MSCI including Global Head of Products, Global Head of Index and Global Head of Client Coverage, taking on the additional role of Head of Marketing in 2005.

Prior to joining MSCI in 2000, Baer spent eight years at Bloomberg LP, where he ran the business in France, Scandinavia and the UK. He later became Deputy Head of Bloomberg’s European Sales organization. Before this, Baer worked in the Equity Derivatives division of Barclays De Zoete Wedd and at Morgan Stanley Asset Management, also related to equity derivatives. After graduate school, Baer worked in advertising and journalism for a number of years.

Baer is both a US and UK national and speaks French, German and some Dutch. He received an MA in History from Trinity College, Cambridge in 1985 and a Masters from the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University in 1987.

Baer appears regularly in the financial media, including TV, to discuss the latest trends within the asset management industry, including the role of indexing.