The fund industry has made Joe Mansueto a billionaire. Yet you could pass him on a Chicago street and never know it, Don Phillips confides to Bloomberg Businessweek reporter Ben Steverman in a profile of the Morningstar founder and CEO [Read the Bloomberg Businessweek article] .

Steverman reports that Mansueto still sees growth opportunities for the fund tracker and investment research firm. One note not struck in the article is that those opportunities expand beyond mutual funds to new markets and could lead to a transformation of the quickly growing firm and how it relates to the fund industry.

The biggest area for growth may be overseas. Mansueto points out that the U.S. only makes up about half of the financial markets, yet Morningstar earns more than 70 percent of its revenue here.

"Over time, our revenue mix should approximate that percentage," Mansueto tells the news service, adding that: "A lot of the capabilities and analytics we've created in the United States can really be applied to investors around the world," Mansueto says.

That thinking has also driven many of the recent deals made by Mansueto to build out Morningstar's capabilities. The firm has made six deals, including pickups in Australia, the United Kingdom, and France.

A second ambition for Mansueto is to go head-to-head with Moody's, S&P and Fitch by jumping into the securities rating business.

"To me, it's a natural evolution of our business," Mansueto says. At just 53 years old, Mansueto has time to see the vision through.

"He stays very focused on long-term goals," Don Phillips, the president of Morningstar Fund Research, tells the news service. 

Edited by: Sean Hanna, Editor in Chief


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