Almost a year after he changed roles at Thomson Reuters and moved to Switzerland, Gary Barr has left the vendor and joined investment company Bridgewater Associates in a research data role. During most of his time at Thomson Reuters Barr was heavily involved in the data management space in the Enterprise division but at the end of last year he moved to head the Markets division of Thomson Reuters Global Resources.
Bridgewater Associates is a US-based investment management company that services institutional clients including foreign governments and central banks, corporate and public pension funds, university endowments and charitable foundations.
He moved to Switzerland to assume the role in Thomson Reuters’ Markets division from his previous base in the US. Prior to this he was head of Investment Management Solutions business for the Americas and was responsible for growing the vendor’s customer base in the region, a role that he held for a period of approximately eight months.
The largest proportion of his time at the data vendor, however, was spent looking after the data management side of its business. He was global head of Enterprise Data for 10 months and before this was acting CEO and business proposition owner of Reuters’ DataScope pricing and reference data business. Barr’s previous role as head of EDM at Thomson Reuters, which he was appointed in 2006, saw him spearhead the drive by the vendor to provide “data solutions” rather than raw data.
During his four years looking after DataScope, he was charged with developing the vendor’s strategic direction, product management and financial management of this business line. He indicates that he grew the top line business from US$20 million in 2002 to US$100 million in summer 2006 in terms of annual recurring revenues.
Prior to this, Barr worked for financial services management consultancy Spirit Solutions for just under a year and held various roles at financial institutions including Credit Suisse, Goldman Sachs and SG Warburg.
