Good afternoon, and welcome to MSCI's 2020 Annual Shareholders Meeting. I will now turn the call over to MSCI's CEO and Chairman of the Board, Henry Fernandez.
Good afternoon, and thank you for joining MSCI's 20 20 Annual Shareholders Meeting. My name is Henry Fernandez, and I am the CEO and the Chairman of the Board of MSCI Inc. While it is not a new practice for MSCI, conducting our Annual Shareholders Meeting virtually allows us to ensure safe participation by all during the current COVID-nineteen pandemic. I hope that you are all safe and healthy, and please take all necessary precautions to protect yourselves, your families and your communities. I am pleased to report that the polls are now open and you may submit your vote online until we officially close the polls following the presentation of the proposals.
Please remember that if you have already submitted a proxy, it is not necessary to submit your vote online unless you wish to change your vote. Slide 2 sets forth the agenda for our meeting. At our meeting today, I will present the proposals that you are voting on. If you have any questions about the proposals, you may submit them during the web through the web portal. Following the presentation of all proposals, any questions about them will be addressed.
Then we will hear the preliminary report of the Inspector of Elections and adjourn the formal Annual Meeting. I will then proceed with a brief discussion of our financial results for the full year 2019 and for the Q1 of 2020. Following this discussion, you will be given another opportunity to ask questions not related to the proposals. Our meeting rules require shareholders wishing to raise questions on topics other than the proposals to wait until that time. Slide 3 presents each of our director nominees.
I am pleased to announce that all members of our Board of Directors are with us on this webcast this afternoon. Alison McNearney, who is a partner at PricewaterhouseCoopers, our independent auditor, is also participating and is available to answer your questions. American Election Services, the Inspector of Elections for this meeting, is represented on the webcast today by Christopher Woods. Mr. Woods has executed his Inspector's Oath.
The Board fixed March 3, 2020 as the record day for determining the shareholders entitled to vote at this meeting. An affidavit is with the Inspector of Elections attesting to the fact that the notice of the meeting, the proxy statement and the 2020 annual report to shareholders were all mailed to shareholders of record on or about March 18, 2020. We had 85,000,000 14,750 shares outstanding and entitled to vote on the record date. It has been confirmed that we have a quorum present today, represented by proxy or virtually. The Annual Shareholders' Meeting is therefore now formally called to order.
I will begin by presenting the 3 items to be voted upon. As a reminder, we will acknowledge any comments or questions submitted by shareholders on the proposals themselves after all proposals have been presented. Item 1 is the election of directors. The current Board has nominated 10 directors myself, Henry Fernandez Rob Ashe, who is our current Independent Lead Director Ben DuPont Wayne Edmonds Kathy Kinney, Jacques Perol, Sandy Rattray, Linda Riffler, Marcus Smith and Paula Volant. Sandy and Paula are our newest directors, just having joined our Board in February.
So a warm welcome to them at their 1st Annual Shareholders Meeting. Before moving on to the next item, I would like to take this opportunity to thank profusely Alice Handy and George Sigler, each of whom retired from our Board and did not run for reelection at this meeting, for their valuable contributions and service to our company and its shareholders. We will greatly miss them and their insight and counsel for many years. Moving on to Slide 4, item 2 is the advisory vote to approve the compensation of our named executive officers as described in our 2020 proxy statement. Even though this vote, which is often called a say on pay vote, is a non binding vote, the compensation and talent management committee and the full board will take the results of the vote into account when making future as MSCI's independent auditor for the fiscal year ending December 31, 2020.
All of the proposals on the agenda are now before the meeting. If any shareholder has a question or would like to make a comment regarding any of the proposals and you have already not done so, please submit your question through the web portal. Since there are no questions or additional proposals to come before the meeting related to the business of the meeting as set forth in the agenda, this is your final opportunity to vote. Any shareholder who has not voted or who wishes to change his or her vote may do so by following the instructions on the web portal. We will now pause to allow such votes.
The voting is now ended and the polls are now closed. The next item is the preliminary report of the Inspector of Elections. Cecilia Eiza, our Corporate Secretary will summarize the report.
The preliminary report of the Inspector of Elections indicates that a minimum of approximately 95.59 percent of the votes of common stock voted for each of the director nominees, representing a majority of votes cast for or against. Approximately 97.57 percent of the votes of common stock represented at this meeting have voted on an advisory basis for the approval of the executive compensation of our named executive officers. Approximately 98.03 percent of the votes of common stock represented at this meeting have voted for the ratification of our audit committee selection of PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP as the company's independent auditor for 2020. Any ballots cast before the polls close, but not reflected in the preliminary report, will be included in the final vote tally. We will file a report with the SEC containing the final tally no later than 4 days following this meeting.
That summarizes the preliminary report of the Inspector of Elections. I will now turn it back over to Henry.
This concludes the formal part of our annual meeting. There being no further business to come before the meeting, the 2020 Annual Meeting of Shareholders of MSCI is now adjourned. And now I will give a brief report on the company's 2019 financial results as well as on our Q1 2020 results. Before I move on to discuss the 20 19 financial results, I would like to remind you that my remarks contain forward looking statements. You are cautioned not to place undue reliance on forward looking statements, which speak only as of the date on which they are made and are governed by the language on Slide 5.
For a discussion of additional risks and uncertainties, please see the Risk Factors and Forward Looking Statements disclaimer in our most recent Form 10 ks and our other SEC filings. In addition to results presented on the basis of U. S. GAAP, we also refer to non GAAP measures. We believe our non GAAP measures facilitate meaningful period to period comparisons and provide insight into our core operating performance.
On Slides 10 through 13, you will find a reconciliation to the equivalent GAAP measure in the presentations and an explanation of why we deem this information to be meaningful, as well as how management uses these measures. Before I discuss MSCI's longer term growth strategy, let me first go over Slide 6, which provides a quick summary of our financial results for the past year 2019. Following on the momentum of recent years, we delivered very strong financial performance for 2019. Specifically operating revenue was approximately $1,600,000,000 growing nearly 9% over the prior year, driven by growth in recurring subscription revenue of 8% and growth in asset based fees of 7.5%. Adjusted EBITDA was $850,000,000 growing 10% over the prior year.
Our business also generated free cash flow of $656,000,000 growing 16% over the prior year. And finally, we reported adjusted earnings per share of $6.44 growing 20% over the prior year. Over the past 4 years, MSCI has delivered a compound annual growth rate of nearly 30% in adjusted EPS. Earlier this morning, we reported our financial results for Q1 2020 and hosted our earnings call, where we also shared details on our actions to manage through this current challenging environment, as well as our latest outlook for the full year. A copy and a replay are available on the Investor Relations section of msci.com.
Slide 7 highlights the key pillars of our growth strategy, which is unchanged from what we have shared with you previously. We continue to identify and execute on potential areas of attractive growth aligned with our strategy within our core markets. And we believe we have the right systems, processes and talent to evaluate, prioritize and execute in flight opportunities and capture the next wave of growth. Our success in 2019 was a direct result of executing our strategy. We will continue our consistent and disciplined approach to manage our investments for shareholders.
In summary, our 2019 full year results demonstrate our ongoing strong track record of execution and our ability to deliver shareholder value. We continue our disciplined approach to investments and managing capital and above all we remain highly focused on driving value for our clients, our partners, employees and shareholders in 2020 beyond. We believe we're well positioned as an all weather franchise that can prosper regardless of market conditions. And we look forward to keeping you updated on our progress. We will now proceed with our question and answer session.
Hi, Henry. There is a question regarding the Thrift Savings Plan and whether MSCI will exclude state owned Chinese companies from its global indexes. Would you like to comment?
Yes, I would like to comment on it. But first, I'd like to indicate that it is not our practice or policy to comment on any specific client or our business with any particular client. In general, I will say that all clients of MSCI around the world have a choice of any index benchmark they wish to use pursuant to their stated investment objectives. Some of them may use our standard indices, which include all companies, whether it's paid on or not a paid on and that are publicly listed, whether they are in China or in France or in the U. S.
And those are the standard indices that we offer. If somebody wants to make a specific and explicit exclusion of a particular set of companies or countries, they would come to MSCI and ask us for a specialized customized index, which we are always happy to provide in order for them to have their own benchmark for their own investment objectives. Are there any other questions or comments submitted to the web portal?
There are no additional questions.
So there are no further questions relevant to the business of the company. Thank you again for your interest in MSCI and please stay safe and healthy. Good day.