Bloomberg’s decision this month to end its distribution agreement with Thomson Financial for its Institutional Brokers Estimates Service (IBES) could mark the beginning of a new round of tit-for-tat strikes between the major market data vendors as they struggle to discern among those areas in which they compete and those in which they are partners.

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The current regulatory environment has turned much attention on the machinations of the research distribution business. As well as studying the inherent conflicts of interest that dog sell-side research departments and their investment banking partners, regulators are now looking at how some research outfits gather their information.

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Reuters has sold the second of its three independent research groups, as part of its ongoing business refocusing. The company sold ORT SAS, a credit evaluation company, for €71 million, to Coface, a credit insurance company owned by Natexis Banques Populaires. ORT posted profit of €6.7 million for 2003 and had assets of €16 million at year end. It sold TowerGroup to MasterCard earlier in the year. Its third research asset – the Yankee Group – remains on the block.

As expected, Reuters last month sold its TowerGroup independent research operation, to MasterCard Advisors, a subsidiary of credit card company MasterCard International. The sale – possibly ranging between $20-25 million – ends Reuters’ foray into the independent research area, despite earlier promises that it would leverage its expertise in text-based information to become a leading player in this burgeoning marketplace. For its part, MasterCard says it will maintain TowerGroup’s independent stance; in fact, MasterCard may be more of an independent parent than Reuters could ever be, given Reuters’ business and its portfolio of technology holdings. TowerGroup will report into the same executive who runs MasterCard’s existing Purchase Street Research business, Karen Cone (see Celebrity Citings, Page 11).

Thomson Financial has formed a new research group to coordinate its various research-related activities. The new unit will be headed by Michael Thompson, director of research, who joins from RiskMetrics. Thompson will report to chief content officer Sarah Dunn. Chuck Hill, dir-ector of research for Thomson’s First Call unit, will be leaving the company.

Merrill Lynch has begun work on developing its next-generation research integration and distribution platform, the Research Analyst Workbench. The platform will be based on Microsoft operating and database systems and will be compliant with the Research Information eXtensible Markup Language (RIXML).