26 Nov 07
Inside Market Data
November 26th 2007
Vol 23 No 10
ORGANIZATION AND STRATEGY
Ipreo Buys NSight to Bolster Bigdough- Ipreo, the data and technology vendor formed last year by the combination of Hemscott, I-Deal and MarketPipe, will this week announce that it has acquired New York-based CRM software vendor NSight Enterprise Software, Inside Market Data has learned.
The deal was signed last Wednesday, Nov. 21 for an undisclosed sum, officials say. NSight will be incorporated into Ipreo as a new Research, Sales and Trading division, which will comprise Ipreo's customer relationship management (CRM) solutions and its Bigdough database of buy-side contact data, and headed by NSight chief executive Neil Hyman and chief technology officer Jeff Lewis. Hyman will become executive vice president and managing director of the division, while Lewis becomes managing director of technology for the division.
NSight's 12 staff-around six developers, three account managers and the remaining executive management-will also join Ipreo, officials say. The two will combine NSight's iStar institutional information, account management, research distribution, holdings and contact management product with Bigdough.
NSight already provides Bigdough data via its platform, as the vendor anticipated client demand for being able to combine Ipreo's data with iStar's functionality, Hyman says. "One of the things this union will enable us to do is to concentrate on our software platform and on tighter integration with Ipreo's data and analytics," enabling the vendor to expand the platform beyond equity markets to cover information on other asset classes, he says.
But beyond that, there will be "a convergence of platforms for clients that want Bigdough functionality and CRM together," in the third quarter of next year, says Kevin Marcus, president and chief operating officer of Ipreo, though the vendor will continue to offer the products separately-for example, for clients that just want to use Bigdough as a prospecting solution.
"Bigdough is recognized as the best dataset for this information, but has historically been used as a prospecting tool for reaching the buy side, and as a CRM solution," Marcus says. "When we created Ipreo, we recognized that we needed to perform a full rebuild to bring the CRM solution into the next generation," but decided that NSight offered a ready-made alternative to lengthy in-house development.
Ipreo will offer two enterprise deployment options-a local software and infrastructure installation, and a hosted platform run from Ipreo's own facilities.
The vendor is targeting the platform at research analysts, institutional sales traders and position traders, though the functions used would vary, Hyman says. "A salesperson would use it to manage investor relationships-for example, if they are sending out a list of stocks, to find out who holds them, who will likely be interested, or which research analysts cover them... whereas research analysts would use the system to focus communications around their coverage universe," he says.
Max Bowie
About Ipreo
Ipreo is a leading global provider of high quality data, expert insight, and productivity solutions to Investment Banking and Corporate clients. With decades of experience serving the capital markets, a reputation for superior customer service, and a commitment to creating technologies that improve our clients' performance, Ipreo is both a dynamic innovator and a trusted resource. Formed in late 2006 through the merger of i-Deal (New York-based provider of new-issuance software and analytics) and Hemscott (London-based financial data firm, and parent of Bigdough in the US), Ipreo has more than 700 employees and operations in the U.S., U.K., India, and Hong Kong. Ipreo is majority-owned by private equity firm Veronis Suhler Stevenson (www.vss.com). For more information, please go to www.ipreo.com.
About NSIGHT Enterprise Software
NSIGHT Enterprise Software, founded in 2003, is a software company focused on innovative solutions for the institutional financial services industry. NSIGHT's principals are accomplished Wall Street professionals with decades of experience developing proprietary systems for Wall Street firms. NSIGHT Enterprise Software is a customer focused firm, created to leverage deep industry and technical expertise to deliver best-of-breed software solutions to the institutional finance community. For more information, please go to http://www.nsightsoftware.com/.
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Press contact for Ipreo:
Kate McKay
212.849.5060