S&P pays $44bn for IHS Markit as financial-data providers race for scale
Like their consumer-tech counterparts, market-information providers want to lock clients into self-contained ecosystemsNov 30th 2020IN 2003 LANCE UGGLA, a Canadian stockbroker, founded a financial-data startup in a British barn. Endowed with just $17m in seed funding and ten employees, Markit started off by providing pricing for the opaque market in credit-default swaps, hoping to tap…
Sadyr Japarov is elected president of Kyrgyzstan in a landslide
Opponents have labelled him a dangerous demagogueJan 11th 2021A CAMPAIGN ad for Sadyr Japarov, the newly elected president of Kyrgyzstan, shows him galloping across a snowy expanse on a white steed, coattails flying in the slipstream. The message is clear: Mr Japarov is a knight in shining armour (or at least in traditional Kyrgyz garb,…
Meet the data firms cashing in on the quant-investing boom
TRADERS AND their Bloomberg terminals are seldom parted. Some 330,000 people fork out around $25,000 annually to access Bloomberg’s suite of services: financial-market data; graphing and pricing tools; the ability to chat with other market participants. These functions are so vital for bond traders, hedge-fund managers and pension-fund investors that, when the pandemic closed offices…
How Ping An, an insurer, became a fintech super-app
A JOB INTERVIEW at Ping An is a strange experience. To become an agent at the insurance group, the world’s largest by market capitalisation, candidates must take questions from an intelligent machine. As they respond, their voice, choice of words and gestures are scrutinised for the qualities of the most productive salespeople. After accruing data…