Futures and options reference data vendor FOW Tradedata has announced a record one million fee lines for its Tradefees exchange fee database of futures and options contracts.

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Interactive Data Corporation now delivers start of day reference data for North American equities at 1am EST for its Pricing and Reference Data business. This is seven hours earlier than previously available and is in advance of the opening of trading in Europe.

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Interactive Data Corporation(IDC), a leading provider of financial market data, analytics and related services, is making data from its Pricing and Reference Data business available through ValueLink’s PriceValidation service, the company is announcing on booth # 1405.

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The owners of the SWX Group, SIS Group and Telekurs Group have unanimously approved the merger of the three companies (Reference Data Review, May 2007). Within the framework of the planned transaction, the business activities of the Swiss financial market infrastructure providers will be combined under the roof of a strategic holding entity. The objective of the merger is to enhance efficiency and innovativeness as well as to strengthen the competitiveness of the Swiss financial centre. This new corporate structure will be established at the start of 2008, subject to approval of the transaction by the Competition Commission. The new enterprise will operate under the name Swiss Financial Market Services.

Telekurs’ agreement this month to acquire its former redistributor in France, Fininfo SA, may signal a new willingness on the part of the big Swiss reference and market data vendor to explore avenues for non-organic growth after decades of shunning acquisitive ventures. The €217.7 Million purchase seems to be a good fit, with Fininfo more closely resembling Telekurs Financial in terms of its business lines than any other European data vendor.

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In what appears to be a MiFID-driven initiative, Telekurs Financial and its Telekurs Group parent and affiliates is merging with fellow Swiss bank-owned SWX Group and SIS Group. While Switzerland operates outside of the EU’s MiFID regime, the move is aimed at strengthening the nation’s financial centre in the face of the major reshaping of the financial services landscape within the EU.

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The boards of Thomson and Reuters have agreed to combine the two groups, and intend to recommend the transaction to their shareholders. Woodbridge, the Thomson family holding company which controls some 70 per cent of Thomson, has irrevocably committed to vote in favour of the transaction, and the Reuters Founders Share Company, which controls a special share in Reuters, has also resolved to support the transaction. Thomson will be renamed Thomson-Reuters Corporation, and the combined Thomson Financial unit and Reuters financial and media businesses will be called Reuters. For more on the likely implications of the transaction for reference data.

Interactive Data Corporation has closed the acquisition of the assets comprising the market data division of Xcitek and the market data assets of its affiliate Xcitax for $25.3 million in cash (Reference Data Review, March and April 2007). As part of the initial integration efforts, Xcitek’s services will be marketed as Interactive Data Xcitek.

Payments reference data provider Bankersalmanac.com says the number of clearing codes it holds has exceeded 300,000, with coverage across 196 countries. Bankersalmanac.com has also enhanced its IBAN search capabilities.

Thomson Corp.’s agreed acquisition of Reuters, which remains subject to regulatory approvals, would essentially ‘reverse’ Reuters into Thomson Financial, creating a financial information business larger than current market leader Bloomberg (Market Data Insight, May 2007). Following the proposed merger – which envisages Reuters CEO Tom Glocer taking the helm of the overall Thomson-Reuters corporation and his sidekick Devin Wenig running the financial information business – it’s likely that Reuters’ enterprise data business would emerge as the dominant force in the combined company’s reference data activities.

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Morningstar, a provider of independent investment research, has completed its acquisition of Standard & Poor’s fund data business, a division of The McGraw-Hill Companies, for $55 million in cash, subject to post-closing adjustments. Standard & Poor’s says it has decided to focus its resources on developing its fund ratings business, in which it forecasts future performance on some 2200 funds globally. Access to fund data to support its fund ratings business will be licensed back from Morningstar as part of the arrangement.

As predicted in Reference Data Review, October 2006, Investors Guaranty Group has launched a new risk management solutions unit, RiskGrid Technologies, into which the operations and technology of CicadaRisk has been merged. The group is also aligning RiskGrid Technologies within a suite of companies and solutions that comprise its financial services industry vertical. CicadaRisk was originally launched as a joint venture between Algorithmics and Cicada, with strategic investment by Investors Guaranty. The senior management team for the new unit includes Douglas Love of Investors Guaranty and Algorithmics veterans Raj Verma and Sumit Chattopadhyay. The RiskGrid solution incorporates Algorithmics’ risk analysis and pricing models and data management technology from Cicada.

Bloomberg has added CMA’s same day closing credit default swap (CDS) prices – CMA DataVision – to the Bloomberg Professional service. CMA DataVision provides data for more than 2000 single name CDSs, indices and tranches, delivered by 5pm London and 5pm New York time. Bloomberg believes that the integration of CMA DataVision with existing credit derivatives analytics functions on Bloomberg Professional solidifies its position as the leading credit derivatives platform. CMA was founded in 2001 by credit specialists and has offices in London and New York.

Reuters clients will now be able to receive credit default swaps and interest rate swaps pricing evaluations from Bear Stearns Pricing Direct. The addition of PricingDirect evaluations to Reuters Pricing and Reference Data is, says Reuters, the first step of a broader strategy to provide its customers with independent credit derivatives pricing based on a Reuters composite alongside pricing from partners. As a result of increasing regulation, its clients require multiple pricing sources and a choice of providers, Reuters believes.

An announcement is expected within weeks concerning the repositioning of CicadaRisk, provider of risk management solutions based on Algorithimics’ risk technology and Cicada’s data management technology. The objective is to enable CicadaRisk to operate more as an independent entity within the financial markets vertical of its principal financial backer Investors Guaranty.

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Thomson Financial’s acquisition of Quantitative Analytics Inc. (QAI), which closed earlier this year, gave the company a product aimed squarely at the quantitative analyst marketplace. But the QAI platform is destined to play a more significant role as the company crystallizes its strategy for distribution of reference data.

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Growth in North American sales of 6.6% drove an overall 5.8% rise in second-quarter revenues to $92.8 million at Interactive Data Corp.’s FT Interactive Data unit, home to the company’s reference data offerings. IDC cited strong demand in North America for FT Interactive Data’s growing line of evaluated pricing, as well as for related reference data services.

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Reuters’ annual revenue run rate for reference data feeds is approaching $100 million. The figure represents a quadrupling of $25 million annualized sales rate of a couple of years ago.

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Reuters has launched DataScope Select in the Asia Pacific region. The service, already available in Europe and North America, provides a cross-asset view of Reuters pricing and reference data on an intraday, real-time, delayed and/or end-of-day basis via a single data source, and allows customers to select and pay for only the data they need.