In the past 18 months,
Morningstar has added 200 people to its workforce, according to
Don Phillips, Morningstar CEO. Now, flush with money from minority owner
SoftBank, the company has plans to do more.
In the coming year, the firm hopes to add 120-200 people. The greatest check on that hiring will be the tight labor market. "Talented designers, writers and programmers are hard to find," said Phillips.
Phillips said the growth will help accomplish what he calls Morningstar's "major theme--moving the entire company to the Web."
Two of the repercussions of that growth have been the hiring of
Thomas Florence, and a slight restructuring in the institutional and retirement divisions.
Previously, retirement and institutional services both fell under the institutional umbrella, which was headed by
Jim Wironen. The institutional part of the business has grown to the point that it needs to operate as a stand alone division, according to a Morningstar spokesperson.
The president of the new institutional division will be Thomas Florence. "I was hired to aggressively grow the institutional business" said Florence. In keeping with developments elsewhere in the company, he expects to do significant hiring in order to accomplish that goal.
"There's huge to room to grow," said Florence. "We need to do some basic blocking and tackling in order to expand Morningstar into markets that they're not in today. Significant growth can be achieved by expanding our Internet capabilities into the institutional market."
Florence was senior vice president at
Pilgrim Baxter. He was in charge of the distribution of
PBHG funds.
Jim Wironen will continue to head retirement services, but will be promoted to division president. He was senior vice president for Morningstar retirement services, before that department was a stand-alone division. As president of retirement services, he will be in charge of
ClearFuture, Morningstar's advice service, as well as their education and consulting products. Both Florence and Wironen will report directly to Morningstar president
Timothy Armour.
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