Refinitiv, the trading and data business being spun out of Thomson Reuters, continues to spend more to take on its rivals. Only a few hours after closing the deal to acquire order management system specialist AlphaDesk, the company announced a strategic investment in alternative data platform and marketplace BattleFin, which caters to data vendors and asset managers.
As part of the deal, Refinitiv will enable its customers to Leverage BattleFin’s datasets across its data platforms, including quantitative data management platform QA Direct in the Cloud. The latter is a new product offering that Refinitiv launched last year in order to build upon its existing hardware-based data platform, which allows users to manage and integrate quantitative analysis and investment data.
Refinitiv’s flagship Eikon will also be integrated with BattleFin’s alternative data marketplace Ensemble to help improve data discovery for analysts and portfolio managers.
Refinitiv spends to take on rivals
This collaboration complements Refinitiv’s current alternative data products which has been serving the financial industry for over 17 years. The integrated offering will build upon its heat maps, news Analytics , and social media sentiment data.
The BattleFin alternative datasets are set to span across the Eikon information terminal, Refinitiv’s quantitative analytics platform QA Direct in the Cloud, trading infrastructure, and big capital markets trading venues by the end of 2017.
Refinitiv continues to invest in trends such as machine learning, cloud computing, and automation to cope with competition from rivals such as Bloomberg in the $50 billion global data and technology market.
Commenting on the news, Pradeep Menon, managing director of investing and advisory at Refinitiv, said: “The integration of BattleFin’s alternative data into Refinitiv’s platforms will save quants and portfolio managers time as they look to efficiently implement alternative data strategies into their investment workflows, creating a holistic data platform to serve the investment community.“
Tim Harrington, CEO of BattleFin, added: “Our BattleFin Ensemble platform lets firms source, evaluate, test and purchase alternative data. This partnership with Refinitiv allows firms to access fundamental, reference and alternative data in a streamlined manner, dramatically reducing the friction and pain points that data buyers have faced in the past.”
