Next up in our introduction to the distinguished nominees for the Leaders in Trading 2023 Editors’ Choice Awards, we bring you the shortlist for the Outstanding Market Data Provider category, shining a light on those displaying recent excellence in the data sphere.
Over the last year, the market has been increasingly turning its attention to data quality and accessibility, with providers continually enhancing their offerings for clients through technological developments, new partnerships and significant investment.
Among the key players in this competitive landscape, The TRADE has selected big xyt, BMLL Technologies, Neptune Networks, and TP ICAP, Parameta Solutions for the 2023 shortlist, following various individual achievements by these vendors over the past year.
big xyt
Market data provider big xyt has had a stellar year. Among its recent moves was the unveiling of its real-time analytics offering in October in which it leverages its own proprietary European tape. The turnkey solution provides trading firms, exchanges, dealing desks and issuers with enhanced post-trade metrics, as well as pre-trade support. The ‘first-to-market’ service is focused on a high quality, consistent and normalised dataset of European trades and EBBO benchmark prices.
In July, big xyt and the Johannesburg Stock Exchange launched a joint venture, named big xyt ecosystems, to offer data analytics to global trading venues. It offers the Trade Explorer data platform, recently launched in South Africa, to financial centres globally, offering analytics tools which allow users to understand market liquidity and flows, market share, business concentration and execution performance, alongside delivering tools for analysing trading patterns and for pre-trade decision support. Prior to this, in May, big xyt launched a new trade verification tool – an extension of its Open TCA solution – to improve ETF execution, with the move having come in response to the pre-hedging debate. It is focused on execution analytics at both the pre- and post-trade stage, with users able to submit any trade or order for the analytics returning the verification of orderbook characteristics, price reversion and execution performance instantaneously.
With Europe as its key market, big xyt has also continued to expand globally, onboarding and upgrading a number of clients. Through these relationships, the business has worked hand in hand to offer some of its clients’ functionalities through its own product suite for use by other users. A key characteristic of the independent business is its autonomy – to date the provider has not received any external investment, maintaining its stance as an entity with zero change of conflict of interest.
BMLL Technologies
BMLL has gone from strength to strength in recent months following its Series B Funding in October 2022, raising $26 million from Nasdaq Ventures, FactSet and IQ Capital’s Growth Fund. Following this, in September of this year, Snowflake Ventures joined the Series B investment round as BMLL entered into a partnership with Snowflake. The business provides its clients – banks, brokers, asset managers, hedge funds, global exchange groups, academic institutions and regulators – immediate and flexible access to Level 3, harmonised, T+1 historical order book data and advanced pre- and post-trade analytics at scale.
The provider has continued to expand through partnerships and launches, with Magma Capital Funds; Aquis Exchange; SIX Group; Jefferies; Berenberg; FactSet; Bank of England; Financial Conduct Authority; NYU’s Quant Team; and Kepler Cheuvreux as the latest additions to its client roster. In September, trading infrastructure provider Exegy entered into an introducer partnership with BMLL Technologies to help free up time spent on data analysis, allowing for algos to be enhanced and for clients to derive alpha. BMLL has continually stressed the importance of global coverage in today’s markets and recently added Aquis data for listed companies, data from FINRA US, Cboe Global Markets Japan and CBOE Australia, the Australian Stock Exchange, Japannext Co., SGX Group, the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE), and Hong Kong Stock Exchange (XHKG), as well as expanding its equities and ETF data offering to include Shenzhen Stock Exchange data.
Through recent investments BMLL has been able to expand geographically, as well enhance its data coverage and grow the team. Over the last 12 months, the team has grown by 35% in areas including: engineering, technology, sales and marketing. Recent people moves include industry veteran Rob Laible appointed as head of Americas, Jenny Chen as head of sales, Americas, and Tom Jardine as customer-facing data scientist, Americas.
Neptune Networks
Neptune has made several strides and seen significant growth in the last 12 months, working to enhance liquidity in global markets. It provides axes from top global fixed income dealers to various buy-side firms, supplying the highest quality bond pre-trade data from the sell-side via FIX. Neptune data is delivered via several workflow options, including direct to OMS and/or EMS, or via a number of APIs, covering various asset classes, including: credit, emerging markets, rates and Munis. Its network provides data from 32 global dealers via one connection and in the last 12 months, the business has developed its buy-side client remit, with more than 90 firms live on the platform, managing over $60 trillion in global assets under management.
In June, Mizuho EMEA joined the Neptune network as axe dealer for bonds, set to distribute axes for investment grade and high yield corporate credit. The following month, fixed income axe provision platform, Neptune Networks, added Lloyds Bank Corporate & Institutional Banking to its bond dealer community. Following the addition, Lloyds Bank confirmed that it would distribute axes of GBP and EUR investment grade and high yield corporate credit as well as UK gilt through Neptune. Other recent additions include Santander and Lombard Odier. Through this move, Lombard Odier has access to Neptune’s axes across rates, investment grade, high yield and emerging markets bonds.
TP ICAP, Parameta Solutions
Parameta Solutions is TP ICAP’s data and analytics division and provides a range of services for the market: OTC market data, benchmarks and indices, risk solutions, and regulatory solutions. In the last year its data offering has developed through product launches and updates in different areas. As of August 2023, Parameta Solutions’ revenue had increased 5% to £91 million, with an overall uplift in margin and profitability. The firm provides users with pre- and post-trade analytics, as well as unbiased OTC content and proprietary data, price discovery insights, and risk management services. Its offering also includes benchmark and indices, and the business was recently recognised as an EU benchmark administrator by ESMA, becoming the first inter-dealer broker to administer OTC benchmarks and indices across both Europe and the UK. The post-trade offering helps users control their counterparty and regulatory risks. The tools manage balance-sheet exposure and also provide compression and optimisation services.
In August 2022, the firm joined forces with PeerNova to launch ClearConsensus, a transparent high-fidelity consensus network for independent price valuation (IPV). A year on, in August this year, TP ICAP, Parameta Solutions launched a new family of interest rate volatility (IRSV) indices in a bid to provide robust and transparent daily indices in interest rates swap markets. IRSV indices, built on a theoretical foundation when measuring interest rate swap volatility, allows for a model-free measure of spot implied volatility for market participants.
The business is focused on the consolidation of Parameta Solutions companies – which is well-progressed according to the business – in a bid to develop more partnerships with third-party data providers, with a confirmed investment planned for the expansion of the business. In addition, Parameta Solutions is working in conjunction with global analytics firm Numerix to build independent fair valuation of OTC derivatives – set to launch a new valuation product in H1 2024, adding to the risk management solutions.