15 Oct 07
Ipreo Automates Meetings Data
Ipreo, the business created by the merger of Hemscott, i-Deal and MarketPipe, is preparing to launch a new service aimed at automating meeting communications as part of the investment research process between broker dealers and investment managers.
Though several tools already focus on managing the research flow between sell-side and buy-side firms, Ipreo's service, dubbed EventHub, aims to manage the process of broker-dealers arranging meetings between buy-side clients and companies in which the dealer hopes they will invest, as well as providing a list of other so-called corporate events.
Some buy-side firms consider access to company management an important part of the investment decision-making process, and assess the quality of those meetings as a factor in determining the fees they pay the sell-side for research and related services from their brokers.
EventHub enables buy-side firms to view meetings or events proposed by dealers, and to confirm or reject them, either via a secure Web portal, or by integrating the core portal with a calendar program (such as Ipreo's i-Planner) via Web services. Sell-side firms who offer the meetings can make them available to individual asset managers, or to sub-categories of firms based on their location or size, while the buy side can use the service to rate the usefulness of meetings as an input to their investing based on criteria including location, level of interest, feedback, and whether senior management attended, and can also introduce their own criteria as well as sorting and filtering capabilities to rank the productivity of their broker relationships.
"In recent years, there has been a greater emphasis on corporate access as a key differentiator in measuring the quality of the buy-side and sell-side relationship," says Frank LaQuinta, executive vice president and managing director of global products and applications at Ipreo. However, he says investment managers have found themselves so overwhelmed with requests for them to attend meetings and other events that for many, the process has become "unmanageable and inefficient."
The automated process "saves having to call multiple dealers to set up meetings" with companies that an asset manager is interested in, and also avoids them giving away their interest to others.
The service is currently still in development, and should be live by year-end, LaQuinta says. The vendor is also talking to both sell-side and buy-side potential participants. "The sell side has the meetings, so we want them to contribute... and we are saying to the buy side, 'If we build it, will you come?'"
He says a "critical mass" of between three and five investment banks should prompt good acceptance from the buy side, which in turn will encourage more banks to join.
Max Bowie