portfolio management and accounting, and significantly increase the amount of equity research content and functionality. 

## 2. Create a premier global investment database. 

Our goal is to continue building or acquiring new databases for additional types of investments, including various types of funds outside the United States and other widely used investment products. 

As detailed on page 27, we currently provide extensive data on nearly 380,000 investments globally, including managed investment products, individual securities, capital markets data, real-time stock quotes from nearly all of the world’s major stock exchanges, and a live data feed that covers exchange-traded equities, derivatives, commodities, futures, foreign exchanges, precious metals, news, company fundamentals, and analytics. 

Our data is the foundation for all of the products and services we offer. We focus on proprietary, value-added data, such as our com- prehensive data on current and historical portfolio holdings for mutual funds and variable annuities. Within each database, we continuously update our data to maintain timeliness and expand the depth and breadth of coverage. Our strategy is to continuously expand our databases, focusing on investment products that are widely used by large numbers of investors. In particular, we’re focus- ing on expanding our fundamental equity data. We also strive to establish our databases as the pre-eminent choice for individual investors, financial advisors, and institutional clients around the world, as well as continuing to invest in world-class data quality, processing, and delivery. 

Over the past several years, we’ve developed a series of proprietary indexes based on our investment data. The Morningstar Indexes are rooted in our proprietary research and can be used for precise asset allocation and benchmarking and as tools for portfolio con- struction and market analysis. We’ve expanded the range of indexes we offer over the past three years and are working to expand our index business globally. 

## 3. Continue building thought leadership in independent investment research. 

We believe that our leadership position in independent investment research offers a competitive advantage that would be difficult for competitors to replicate. Our goal is to continue producing invest- ment insights that empower investors and focus our research efforts in four major areas: 

U Extend leadership position in fund research to additional markets outside the United States.  Over the past several years, we have expanded our analyst coverage in fund markets outside of the United States. We’ve built an integrated team of locally based fund experts to expand our research coverage in additional markets around the world. As of December 31, 2010, we had nearly 100 fund analysts globally, including teams in North America, Europe, Asia, and Australia. We currently produce qualitative analyst research on more than 1,500 funds outside the United States. 

U Continue leveraging our capabilities in stocks.  Our equity research complements our approach to mutual fund analysis, where we focus on analyzing the individual stocks that make up each fund’s portfolio. As of December 31, 2010, we provided analyst research on approximately 2,300 companies globally. 

We’re committed to maintaining the broad, high-quality coverage we’ve become known for as one of the largest providers of inde- pendent equity research. We’re working to expand distribution of our equity research through a variety of channels, including through financial advisors, buy-side firms, and companies outside of the United States. We believe that investors’ increasing aware- ness of the value of independent research will strengthen our business over the long term. We’ve also expanded our proprietary stock database, which we view as an important complement to our analyst research. 

U Build business in fixed-income credit research.  We began publish- ing research and ratings on corporate credit issuers in December 2009 and currently produce research and ratings on more than 720 corporate credit issuers. In 2010, we entered into our first credit research agreement with a major financial services firm to provide credit ratings and research to its 18,000 financial advi- sors. We view credit ratings as a natural extension of the equity research we’ve been producing for the past decade. We believe we have a unique viewpoint to offer on company default risk that leverages our cash-flow modeling expertise, proprietary measures like economic moat, and in-depth knowledge of the companies and industries we cover. 

We’re including this research on our three major software plat- forms to provide investors with an additional perspective on fixed-income investments. We also plan to monetize the ratings through subscriptions to our institutional equity research clients, who have access to the forecasts, models, and scores underlying the ratings. 

