Morningstar, Inc.

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Morningstar, Inc. is an investment research and investment management firm headquartered in Chicago, Illinois, United States. Morningstar is a leading provider of independent investment research in North America, Europe, Australia, and Asia. The company offers an extensive line of products and services for individual investors, financial advisors, asset managers, retirement plan providers and sponsors, and institutional investors in the private capital markets. Morningstar provides data and research insights on a wide range of investment offerings, including managed investment products, publicly listed companies, private capital markets, and real-time global market data. Morningstar also offers investment management services through its investment advisory subsidiaries, with more than $220 billion in assets under advisement and management as of Sept. 30, 2017 . The company has operations in 27 countries.

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History

Founder Joe Mansueto initially had the idea for Morningstar in 1982 while reviewing mutual fund annual reports he had requested from several prominent fund managers. However, it was only after a year working as a stock analyst for Harris Associates, seeing the fund industry and potential competitors up close, that he was convinced that the opportunity was there. Morningstar was subsequently founded in 1984 from his one-bedroom Chicago apartment with an initial investment of US$80,000. The name Morningstar is taken from the last sentence in Walden, a book by Henry David Thoreau; "the sun is but a morning star".

In July 1999, Morningstar accepted an investment of US$91 million from SoftBank in return for a 20 percent stake in the company. The two companies had formed a joint venture in Japan the previous year.

Morningstar's initial public offering occurred on May 3, 2005, with 7,612,500 shares at $18.50 each. The manner in which Morningstar went public is notable. They elected to follow Google's footsteps and use the OpenIPO method rather than the traditional method. This allowed individual investors to bid on the price of the stock, and allowed all investors equal access.

As of February 2015, Joe Mansueto owned approximately 55% of the outstanding shares in Morningstar.

In September 2016, Morningstar announced that it had appointed Kunal Kapoor as chief executive officer, effective January 2017, with Mansueto becoming executive chairman at the same time.

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Corporate identity

Morningstar's current logo is notable in that it was designed by Paul Rand. Mansueto sought Rand out in 1989 after deciding that the company's design standards needed to be improved, and that the first step would be a redesign of its logo. After several phone calls, letters and finally a trip to meet Rand in person, Mansueto convinced him to work on the logo, which was completed within four months. The new design features the "o" in Morningstar appearing as a rising sun, which is a nod to the quote that inspired the company's name. While the fee for this work ($50,000) was a significant amount at the time for the company, Mansueto considers it "one of our most valuable assets".