Joe [Mansueto] is still young, and obviously actively involved in day to day management, but what should investors anticipate his retirement or other ‘next step’ will look like? Would he appoint a new CEO and remain chairman, as he did in 1998?

November 6, 2015

Our board of directors is responsible for determining the structure of our leadership team at the CEO level. As Morningstar’s founder and majority shareholder, Joe would make any decisions related to his future role at Morningstar after careful thought and close consultation with the board. But a likely scenario—whenever this does occur—would be for Joe to remain chairman and work with our board of directors to appoint a new CEO. We don’t currently have any timetable or milestones in place for an eventual leadership transition.

Our board of directors is responsible for selecting and evaluating the performance of the CEO, as well as succession planning for the CEO and monitoring succession planning for other executives. As part of this process, we have an emergency succession plan and other succession plans that have been documented and approved by our board of directors. We review and update these plans with the board at least once a year.

As you mentioned, our senior leadership team includes a number of people who have been with us many years, as well as individuals who bring valuable insights and perspective from outside the company. We believe we have an exceptionally strong bench and would be able to choose from several strong candidates if our board of directors decided to appoint a CEO other than Joe Mansueto at some point in the future. The decision-making process would involve looking at a variety of candidates and determining the best fit for Morningstar based on the company’s needs and circumstances at the time. Our preference would be to develop and promote a CEO internally, although that could change depending on how the company evolves.

Our goal is to hire smart, curious, creative people who love what they do and are passionate about our mission of helping investors. We also look for individuals who value teamwork and transparency and are able to thrive in a challenging, fast-paced, and highly collaborative environment. These are attributes that we look for in all of our employees, so we’d expect any potential CEO candidates to exemplify them to an even greater degree.

Regarding the last part of your question, we’ve been focusing more on training, talent management, talent acquisition, and continuing education in recent years. We’re building a company-wide talent management program to help attract, develop, retain, and leverage the skills and talents of our employees. For our senior leadership team, we assess each individual’s strengths, experience, and potential development areas. We’ve also started to identify individuals who may be ready to take on senior roles within a few years, and we work with them to find stretch projects, opportunities for internal movement, and other endeavors (such as outside board positions) that may help them develop into future roles. We also encourage all of our employees to continue learning and growing through continuing education, which includes targeted training programs for a few individuals who could eventually become senior leaders and in some cases, candidates for CEO.

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