This Week: Bloomberg-Azure, Ice Data Services, Burton-Taylor, 7Ridge, and more

Bloomberg adds Data License content to Azure cloud offering

Bloomberg Enterprise Data customers who use Microsoft Azure can now access real-time trading data as well as reference, pricing, regulatory, and point-in-time historical datasets via a private connection in the Azure Virtual Network (VNet).

Data from B-Pipe, Bloomberg’s real-time market data feed, became available via Azure in 2021, and its international rollout was completed in 2022. The service has now been expanded to include access to Bloomberg’s Data License content, adding reference, pricing, regulatory data, corporate actions, ESG and point-in-time historical data for quant and investment research workflows. The content delivered via Azure covers more than 50 million securities and 30,000 data fields. This includes data to facilitate liquidity assessment and volatility analysis, as well as historical pricing information and Bloomberg’s news feeds.

The move means that mutual Azure customers can now read data directly from Azure Blob Storage containers. Customers who choose delivery via Azure can also automate their workflows by selecting data-ready alerts and having them sent to an EventGrid topic hosted in their Azure subscriptions. When a new file lands in Azure, an EventGrid notification will be sent to the topic with the file’s metadata.

Ice Data Services Italy to distribute reference data from Spectrum Markets

Clients of Intercontinental Exchange’s (Ice) Data Services Italy will soon be able to access data from derivatives trading venue Spectrum Markets. In a press release, Spectrum said that the collaboration would initially include reference data, but real-time market data could follow.

Ice Data Services Italy collects and standardizes reference and business entity data, including corporate actions, risk analytics and taxation information, for several asset classes.

The data will be available in Italy first, but the collaboration will expand to incorporate other regions in Europe, according to the release.

Burton–Taylor: Global spending on market data up 4.7% in 2022

Global spending on financial market data and news jumped 4.7% in 2022 to a record $37.3 billion, according to a report by Burton–Taylor International Consulting. The increase was driven by strong demand for pricing, reference and valuation data, but real-time trading and data spending accounted for the largest share of revenues, the report found.

Bloomberg continues to claim the largest share of the global market data business, followed by Refinitiv and S&P Global Market Intelligence. S&P reported the sharpest revenue growth in 2022, followed by Morningstar, Moody’s Analytics, and FactSet.

Growth was primarily concentrated in the Americas, where it increased by 8.3% in 2022. Market data spending in the Americas accounted for 50.8% of the global total, with EMEA and Asia accounting for 31.1 % and 18.1% respectively.

You can read more about rising market data costs and inconsistencies in how consumers are billed here.

American Financial Exchange Acquired by 7Ridge

The American Financial Exchange (AFX), which facilitates interbank loans, has been acquired by asset manager 7Ridge for an undisclosed sum. In a press release, AFX said that the deal will help it expand its network of members, which currently stands at over 240 banks and other financial institutions.

AFX also said that the deal would help it to promote adoption of its credit-sensitive Ameribor benchmark, which tracks banks’ actual cost of funding on a daily basis.

Ameribor is set daily based on transactions in unsecured interbank loans executed on the AFX platform. Ameribor has a particular focus on regional and midsize banks. It is used to set floating rates, for hedging interest rate risk, and in financial futures.

Afme warns of “lackluster” European equity market as lawmakers discuss Mifir review

As EU politicians gathered for the start of the Mifir trilogue negotiation, the Association for Financial markets in Europe (Afme) urged negotiators to consider the impact of the regulation on equity markets.

In a press release, the industry association warned that complex regulation is harming the liquidity and attractiveness of European financial markets. Afme called on European policymakers to prioritize an “ambitious real-time pre-trade consolidated tape” to help remedy the problem.

According to Afme, the EU’s equity turnover ratio stayed flat from mid-2016 to the end of 2022, compared to a 40% increase in the USA over the same period. Afme said that this trend is explained by the complex regulatory framework governing the EU’s nationally fragmented markets, pointing out that the European equity market has three times as many exchange groups as the US, despite being only half the size.

Afme CEO Afam Farkas said that Europe’s “lackluster” markets needed “a real-time, pre-trade tape to help overcome the current fragmented picture of the EU’s liquidity.”

The EU paved the way for an equities consolidated tape in 2018, but no regulator-backed private candidates came forward to run the tape. The Mifir review has brought fresh attention to the initiative, but market participants disagree on whether the tape should only provide post-trade data or should also provide pre-trade data. The legislative institutions of the EU also disagree on this contentious point, but must reach agreement over the course of the trilogue.

Gleif and OpenCorporates compare notes to improve mapping capabilities

The Global Legal Entity Identifier Foundation (Gleif) has linked its LEIs to corresponding records in the legal-entity database of OpenCorporates, the largest open database of companies in the world. LEIs are now natively available in the OpenCorporates database, enabling easier cross-referencing between the two datasets. In a press release, the two organizations said that this collaboration will facilitate compliance, surveillance, and due-diligence monitoring.

LEIs can help resolve questions of ownership, including verified parent and subsidiary relationships, while the OpenCorporates database of corporate registry records contains foundational company information like named directors and industry codes. Having access to both datasets in one place should streamline entity reconciliation processes and reduce data management costs.

More than 50 percent of the global LEI population is now linked to the OpenCorporates database (some legal entities with LEIs are not registered, including funds).

In addition to OpenCorporates, Gleif already has mapping relationships with S&P Global’s Company ID, Swift’s Market Identifier Code (Mic) and Business Identifier Code (Bic), and the International Securities Identification Number (Isin).

You can read more about identifiers here.

DSB launches UPI user acceptance test

The Derivatives Service Bureau (DSB), which provides reference data for over-the-counter (OTC) derivatives, has launched the user acceptance test (UAT) environment for its unique product identifier (UPI) service.

The DSB is responsible for issuing UPI codes, which will identify future OTC derivatives transactions, as well as operating the UPI reference data library. The UAT environment will be run for nine months before the first compliance date, helping industry players to implement and test their UPI connectivity and data integration before the UPI service begins production.

Broadridge integrates Linedata OMS, signs Cat Financial for post-trade

Broadridge Financial Solutions has announced that its NYFix Matching product will be integrated with asset management software vendor Linedata’s Longview OMS. The collaboration is intended to reduce costs and human error in post-trade processing.

Separately, Swiss structured products service provider CAT Financial Products has chosen a post-trade processing platform from Broadridge. The cloud-based platform combines principal trading for a range of assets with an issuance and agency brokerage service for Actively Managed Certificates (AMCs). 

Alveo integrates Morningstar Sustainalytics ESG content

Financial data management platform provider Alveo has integrated Morningstar Sustainalytics’ ESG content into its data management service. The collaboration combines the two firms’ data management capabilities.

Alveo users can now cross-reference Morningstar Sustainalytics content with client datasets or content sourced from third-party data sources. Data onboarded from Sustainalytics includes its SFDR data, ESG Risk Ratings, Carbon Risk Ratings and EU Taxonomy information.