FirstRain, provider of search-driven research, has released FirstRain Management Monitor – the first in what it says is a new generation of qualitative analytics packages, which includes three initial reports: On the Record Report, No Comment Report and Management Turnover Report. FirstRain Management Monitor focuses on management transparency and turnover – critical issues when assessing the strategy and execution of a company, it says. This new class of web-based analytics distils massive volumes of dispersed information into concise data points and trends that matter to investment professionals and corporate executives.

Perhaps lost in the hullabaloo surrounding Thomson Corp.’s prospective acquisition of Reuters was last month’s release by Thomson Financial of a credit analysis service available via its Thomson One platform. The service draws upon several important Thomson data sets and appears targeted at a market currently dominated by Bloomberg - namely, the increasingly multi-asset hedge fund community.

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Standard & Poor’s has completed the first phase of its programme to integrate its own content with the Capital IQ investment banking platform it acquired last year. The company is seeking to bolster the Capital IQ offering as it aims to compete with rivals such as FactSet Research Systems, Thomson Financial’s Thomson ONE and Reuters’ Knowledge series of services.

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During three years spent trading for his own account, it occurred to Andy Najda, who had spent many years pioneering the user of high-performance 3-D graphics, that the standard trader desktop display was ineffectual in allowing users to take into account the wide array of factors influencing their portfolios.

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Standard & Poor’s Corp.’s acquisition of Capital IQ early this month will give the company a technology platform for its data services it has long relied on others to provide. It’s also a shrewd defensive move that offers S&P some sense of security as one of those ‘others’ moves deeper into the content space itself.

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About five years ago, a friend from J.P. Morgan Asset Management alerted us to a small company called Sectorbase. He suggested that the company’s approach to ‘stock-picking’ – for want of a better word – was interesting, compelling and possibly unique.

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Thomson Financial has introduced Thomson ONE Portfolio, a portfolio analytics platform that includes performance attribution and portfolio profiling capabilities. The service is aimed at investment managers, allowing them to quantify the impact of investment decisions on portfolio performance.

Lionhart, an independent advisory firm specializing in equity-linked arbitrage strategies, has selected Sungard Trading & Risk Systems’ Monis Convertibles XLS analytics libraries for its traders and risk managers in Toronto, New York and London. Lionhart will use Monis’ credit module for credit default swap and asset swap analysis.

Townsend Analytics has signed up to redistribute Interactive Data Corp.’s Global Treasury Information Services (GTIS) feed of foreign exchange rates and precious metals prices via Townsend’s RealTick trading platform. GTIS is now part of IDC’s Comstock subsidiary. RealTick is a data and direct-access trading system for routing orders electronically to a range of U.S. and international markets.

Interdealer broker ICAP PLC has extended its contract with analytics provider Kalahari for a further two years. Kalahari’s Kace system is used by ICAP at several of its global operations, including New York, London, Frankfurt, Copenhagen, Hong Kong, Singapore, Sydney and Bahrain.