Infront Targets UK Markets with London Office, Hires Sales Vets

Infront began its research into the UK market around a year ago, says chief operating officer at the vendor, Urs Rutschmann, and has been working with strategic customers in the London marketplace for some time. "We now feel we have the credibility to launch in a more strategic way," he adds.

The results of Infront's market analysis suggested that the UK market was "ripe for change" Rutschmann says, with those polled expressing an increasing appetite for a more flexible approach to market data and trade execution.

Current activities in the market also suggest a shift is afoot, Rutschman adds. "Proquote has been bought by Iress, IDC is up for sale, and we also hear other moves in the market. People are now looking for a good alternative to all those vendors, better data products and better value products. We have been active in the UK selling our product and we feel that this is a great market opportunity for us now," he says.

Rutschmann believes there has been a desire from UK investors to move away from the traditional vendors for some time, but there just wasn't a product available to serve the majority of their needs. After listening to potential customers about what they required in a new solution, Infront strengthened its offering by adding local UK news and coverage, and now has several hundred clients using their systems.

"We are addressing...the asset management investment community and the wealth management community and there's an appetite for a newer, more modern, robust product which basically offers more value. What we are hearing now is that the product is modern and flexible, the terms of the agreements are more flexible and the support is very individual with any problems addressed on an individual basis.That's what our first clients are telling us - they love our product, they love our support and our commitment to the market here," Rutschmanns says.

London Calling

Currently Infront's London presence consists of 10 staff members, with six based at the vendor's headquarters in Oslo. The four staff on the ground in London include two recent hires, announced today: sales vets Richard Burtsal and Nick Charge, who join the company as sales director and sales manager respectively.

Prior to joining Infront, Burtsal most recently held a senior sales position at Interactive Data in the real-time feeds and trading systems division, before which he was director of business development at IT services and solutions provider Tech Mahindra, and regional sales director at Linedata. Between 1993 and 2001 Burtsal was sales director of Datastream/ICV, which later became part of Thomson Reuters.

Charge joins from cloud-based collateral management solution CloudMargin, where he headed EMEA sales, and has also held senior sales positions within the London financial data industry, including five years as senior account manager at SIX Financial Information.

"We are a sizeable team working towards the London market and will grow as soon as the client base grows. There will definitely be more hires on the client services side and on the line management side. We want to be an established company here over time and a more of a complete local organisation as we go along, " Rutschmanns says.