About a-team Marketing Services
The knowledge platform for the financial technology industry
The knowledge platform for the financial technology industry

A-Team Insight Blogs

Bloomberg Adopts Stealth Approach to Add Evaluated Pricing Service to Data Arsenal

Subscribe to our newsletter

Acknowledging its lack of reliable pricing data for illiquid securities, Bloomberg is quietly building a team of analysts in preparation for a product launch in the pricing evaluations business. The move follows the lead of long-time evaluations provider Interactive Data Corp. (FT Interactive Data) and recent moves by Reuters, Standard & Poor’s and others, and underscores the growing acceptance of evaluated pricing services as identified by A-Team’s recent survey Fixed Income Pricing: Are Evaluations Gaining Value?

Bloomberg has hired evaluations business veteran John Lynch to head the team of analysts. Lynch previously ran the EJV (Electronic Joint Venture) evaluations data provider before and during its ownership by Bridge Information Systems. EJV is now owned by Reuters – it was one of the key components it secured through the Bridge acquisition – and forms the backbone of Reuters’ recent push in the evaluations space (Reference Data Review, September 2005).

The evaluations data initiative will significantly bolster Bloomberg’s pricing data offering across the enterprise, by using analysts to hand price and validate pricing, and adjust models in real time based on changing market conditions. This will be an improvement on its current ‘blackbox’ approach to pricing illiquid securities where it uses computerised models to calculate a price based on a number of generic inputs. This approach fills holes in the range of coverage but it does not provide a high degree of accuracy or reliability to clients, which is becoming increasingly important in today’s regulatory environment, hence the growing acceptance for evaluated pricing.

It also plays to Bloomberg’s strengths as a dominant provider in fixed income data, the asset class with the highest degree of illiquid securities in need of pricing. It is not yet known whether Bloomberg will look at other areas, such as derivatives, highlighted as a segment desperately in need of independent pricing data, but the company is said to be in discussions with the likes of Numerix, a specialist provider of derivatives pricing engines, about potential partnerships.
Lynch will oversee a team of upwards of 50 people, according to sources, based primarily in Bloomberg’s data operations center in Princeton, New Jersey. It is also believed that some staff will be based in New York and London, suggesting an international flavour for the evaluations service. Lynch reports to Zackery Cohen, who is leading the product development efforts for Bloomberg.

Subscribe to our newsletter

Related content

WEBINAR

Upcoming Webinar: An Agile Approach to Investment Management Platforms for Private Markets and the Total Portfolio View

11 June 2025 10:00am ET | 3:00pm London | 4:00pm CET Duration: 50 Minutes Data and operations professionals at private market institutions face significant data and analytical challenges managing private assets data. With investors clamouring for advice and analysis of private markets in their search for returns, investment managers are looking at ways to gain...

BLOG

Buy-Side Faces Structured, Unstructured Data Challenge: A-Team Group Webinar

Buy-side firms are far from satisfied with their present data management strategies and are still struggling to deal with hoary old challenges such as data silos and legacy tech stacks that are inadequate for their modern needs, according to the latest polling from A-Team Group. Only a fifth of respondents feel positively about how they...

EVENT

Buy AND Build: The Future of Capital Markets Technology

Buy AND Build: The Future of Capital Markets Technology London examines the latest changes and innovations in trading technology and explores how technology is being deployed to create an edge in sell side and buy side capital markets financial institutions.

GUIDE

AI in Capital Markets: Practical Insight for a Transforming Industry – Free Handbook

AI is no longer on the horizon – it’s embedded in the infrastructure of modern capital markets. But separating real impact from inflated promises requires a grounded, practical understanding. The AI in Capital Markets Handbook 2025 provides exactly that. Designed for data-driven professionals across the trade life-cycle, compliance, infrastructure, and strategy, this handbook goes beyond...