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Nasdaq Bolsters Corporate Services With Acquisition
November 5, 2008
Aiming to reassure executives whose companies’ stock prices have swung wildly in recent months, Nasdaq OMX Group is enhancing its corporate services with the acquisition of Bloom Partners, a provider of market intelligence.
“With market volatility and uncertainty the norm, a trusted adviser is more important than ever,” said Magnus Bocker, president of Nasdaq OMX, in a statement. “The Bloom methodology has been a respected standard in the surveillance industry.” The terms of the agreement, announced Tuesday, were not disclosed.
Nasdaq currently offers a service--Nasdaq.net--that provides automated access to stock-specific information such as market-maker trading volumes and institutional ownership, and the Nasdaq Market Intelligence Desk, which lets executives speak with professionals who can help interpret data and understand the impact of market events. According to Nasdaq VP John Vogt, Market Intelligence Desk analysts assist clients in understanding their stocks’ trading flow on a given day, and factors driving those movements.
Nasdaq also offers Pinpoint Market Intelligence, a homegrown service launched in January 2008, which, like Oak Brook, Ill.-based Bloom Partners, seeks to supply additional information about institutions’ trades and the reasons behind them. Bloom’s five analysts will join Pinpoint’s seven in a combined unit that provides stock surveillance that goes beyond understanding trade flows and aims to determine which institutional players are actively trading a stock and why they are doing so.
Institutional investors must disclose holdings of greater than 5 percent of a company’s stock, and institutions managing more than $100 million in assets must disclose their holdings quarterly. “But most companies want some intelligence in between,” Vogt said.
The newly formed service’s analysts will synthesize public data from a variety of sources to anticipate not only which institutions are trading a security and why, but when they’re likely to trade, and what to anticipate from those investors going forward, Vogt said. Similar services are available from Thomson Financial Capital Markets Intelligence and Ilios Partners.
“This combination allows my team access to Nasdaq OMX, a premier exchange and technology company with a footprint in a variety of sectors around the world,” said Tom Bloom, president of Bloom Partners.
Nasdaq has been bolstering the products it offers corporate executives for several years. In September 2005 it purchased Carpenter Moore, a management liability insurance specialist, and the following year acquired Shareholder.com, a provider of investor relations services. Last year, Nasdaq bought Directors Desk, a supplier of technology to the boards of public and private companies.
The analysis generated by Pinpoint and Bloom will be offered to issuers on a confidential basis and used for ongoing measurement and benchmarking of investor relations programs, as well as prioritizing time spent with investors. Pinpoint is currently available to all public companies--as part of the synchronized suite of investor relations services from Shareholder.com--and is available to Nasdaq-listed companies through the Market Intelligence Desk.
Although Nasdaq has been building its suite of corporate services for some time, the financial market’s recent volatility has made them especially apropos. “In light of stocks’ higher volatility and lower valuations, executives are very focused on what’s going on with their companies’ stock prices and their shareholder bases,” Vogt said.
NYSE Euronext has also been ramping up its offerings in the area. The exchange operator in June enhanced its NYSEnet Web site--a similar service to Nasdaq.net--adding real-time capabilities. Last month, the company introduced NYSE Market Access Center, which resides in NYSEnet and provides a highly automated alert system to tip off executives to important market events, in addition to a team of analysts to provide context.
