Point to Port: Bloomberg Looks to Ease Concerns Following Completion of BRAIS Acquisition

Last week Bloomberg announced it completed the acquisition of Barclays' Risk Analytics and Index Solutions (Brais) offering.

The move was made in order to further bolster Bloomberg's indices and analytics capabilities. After the acquisition was completed, Lea Carty, global head of buy-side solutions for Bloomberg, told Inside Market Data's Joanne Faulkner about how the data giant is talking with clients to address their concerns about the transition of Brais' index assets.

"We have provided clients with a continuity plan for the availability of the index data and a roadmap for the portfolio and risk analytics integration," he said. "Both have been well-received. Now that the acquisition is complete, we can proceed with these plans."

Bloomberg says it is now committed to evolving the Brais business to appeal to a broader set of market participants. By incorporating the fixed income benchmarks throughout the Bloomberg Professional service, Carty says. "We will dramatically increase the number of market participants that have access to these benchmarks. This includes asset managers who have previously not been Brais customers, as well as sell-side firms who have traditionally not had access to this data."

Point to Port

In January, data consumers expressed their concerns to IMD over potential price hikes following the indices grab, hence, Bloomberg's outreach. One other area of contention has been the integration of Barclays' portfolio analytics solution Point, the intellectual property of which was included in the Brais acquisition.

Bloomberg is going to integrate the Point IP in Port, Bloomberg's multi-asset portfolio risk and analytics tool. This was cause for worry for the fixed-income community, as Barclays said that it would end support for Point 18 months after the deal closed.

Earlier this year, London-based consultancy Citisoft conducted a survey of the fixed-income community to get their thoughts on the pairing. Respondents felt that Port does not fully support portfolio management, risk analytics, performance attribution, asset allocation, optimization, or scenario analysis in its current state risk. And it's not just a knock on Port. A quarter of respondents said that they don't think there's another platform out there that does for fixed income what Point does. Over 40 percent are unsure, with a third believing there is another platform out there (though, not necessarily Port).

Bloomberg's Carty told IMD that the company will incorporate Point's models and analytics ─ including Brais' Global Risk Model and its Hybrid Performance Attribution analysis ─ into Port, while enhancing the solution with Bloomberg data, news, alert, mobile capabilities and its order-management solutions. Carty said that the company will look to expand the analytics asset managers can use when managing their portfolios.

With the closing of this deal, the clock is now ticking on Barclays support of Point. With an 18 month buffer, Waters will be keeping a close on the integration.