BERKELEY, Calif. -- Andrew Rudd is stepping down as chief executive of BARRA Inc. after 15 years in that role.
The company has launched a nationwide search for his replacement; officials hope to have a new CEO in place by midyear.
Mr. Rudd will continue as chairman of the firm he helped create in 1975, but said he will avoid the "day-to-day management cajoling, the harassment, the organizational meetings" that accompany life as a large-company CEO.
The company also is "re-engineering" itself, Mr. Rudd said in an interview with Pensions & Investments. The firm is trying to determine "where we want to concentrate and what we want to de-emphasize," he said.
The acquisition of Rogers Casey & Associates in 1996 expanded BARRA's business to include investment management and pension fund consulting. Sources suggested that business expansion led to a major change in the company that could have driven Mr. Rudd's decision.
"The asset management industry is going through a major revolution. We'll have to take some hard decisions and decide where we want to focus," Mr. Rudd said.
"The job of doing that now in this big environment is beyond me. I don't have the skill set to do those things."
"I'm going to be working essentially full-time, talking with large clients and doing research. But I hope to focus more. I'm interested in transaction analytics, which I think is as revolutionary today as risk management was 15 years ago," Mr. Rudd said.
BARRA has grown substantially in the last 25 years; the company's annual revenue has grown to more than $150 million from $5 million during Mr. Rudd's tenure as CEO.
