December 3, 2009

Wall Street & Technology

Market Data Spending Dipped Slightly in 2009

Burton-Taylor projects modest 1.46% drop in market data spending; Bloomberg and Thomson Reuters share 61% of the market, but FactSet has had the fastest growth in market share. 

As the year draws to a close, Burton-Taylor International Consulting projects the 2009 global spend for financial market data and analysis will be down 1.46% versus 2008.  The Burton-Taylor analysis estimates the industry will exit 2009 at $22.68 billion after closing 2008 at $23.01 billion.  The report also indicates that market data subscriptions are continuing to move from West to East, as the Americas will contract almost 5% while Asia expands 6.5%.  The user segments increasing spend in 2009 were Investment Management, Commodities & Energy and Investment Banking.

Burton-Taylor estimates that Thomson Reuters and Bloomberg hold a combined 61.1% share of the industry, but that Bloomberg closed the gap slightly in 2009.  The report shows that after removing non-market data related revenue such as transactions, order management systems or media, Thomson Reuters and Bloomberg market share is virtually even, at 29.4% and 29.2% respectively.  At 16.5% since 2005, of the global market data and analysis competitors FactSet has shown the highest compound annual growth.

With total spend of $4.54 billion, the Investment Management customer segment had the highest demand globally and in the Americas in 2009, but was only the second and third biggest spender in the Europe, Middle East and Africa and Asia regions.  The segment has grown at an average rate of 9.2% from 2007 to 2009.  Equity Sales & Trading is the second largest segment globally, and the largest in EMEA and Asia, but due to desktop reductions and budget cuts will have shrunk 5.3% to $4.45 billion by the end of 2009.

For the first time, the latest Burton-Taylor report measures Fixed Income and FX/Treasury spend separately.  The demand for Fixed Income will exit 2009 at $4.00 billion, with Bloomberg holding a 46% share.  FX/Treasury data spend will end the year at $1.73 billion, with Thomson Reuters commanding a 70% share.  The fastest growing segment since 2007 has been Commodities & Energy, at average annual growth of 15.6%.  Although slightly higher year on year, the biggest contraction has occurred in the Investment Banking segment where bankruptcies and restructuring led to a decrease in demand from US$1.78 billion in 2007 to US$1.29 billion exit 2009.

"After 11.96% CAGR from 2005-2008, the global spend on market data and analysis will show a small decline in 2009," said Douglas B Taylor, managing partner of Burton-Taylor, in a press release.  "Despite the decrease, analysis indicates that suppliers of emerging and developing market information, low-latency machine readable content, pricing and reference data, or real-time information and analysis tools for the commodities & energy industry will show strong growth."