Earlier this year, First Derivatives bought Reference Data Factory (RDF) for around US$10 million and Dale Richards, CEO of LakeFront Data Ventures and board member of RDF, joined the advisory board of the market data and risk management focused solution provider. Richards, who has since taken a back seat at his own start-up LakeFront Data Ventures, is now set to lead First Derivatives’ push in the reference data space as president of its US operations.
Richards also joins the board of directors of First Derivatives and the vendor is seemingly hopeful his 25 years of experience in the data management field will stand him in good stead to push its new back office and reference data capabilities, which were acquired along with RDF last October. First Derivatives has been working on integrating its market data and risk management focused Delta suite of products with the RDF portfolio and Richards has been engaged in ensuring this process has been a smooth one.
The Delta suite of products, which includes algorithmic and programme trading solutions, market data solutions, risk management applications and market data management software, now sit alongside RDF’s integration tools, feed handlers, data model and data distribution tools.
As well as his role at First Derivatives, Richards will also remain on the board of the data management consultancy boutique firm that he founded LakeFront Data Ventures, which has now become a strategic partner of First Derivatives. Some months prior to its acquisition, RDF was in fact demerged from LakeFront Data Ventures, so the advisory and consulting firm is no stranger to the RDF portfolio.
Prior to his setting up of LakeFront Data Ventures, Richards was chief data officer and vice president of corporate business development at First Derivatives’ rival SunGard. He was charged with leading SunGard’s overall EDM strategy to launch its global integrated data management external approach. He was also one of the three founding members of the EDM Council.
Prior to SunGard’s acquisition of Fame Information Services in 2004, he was president and CEO of Fame, which at the time was backed by new Interactive Data part-owner and private equity house Warbug Pincus. During his time at Fame, Richards restructured the company and launched a strategy to leverage its data management capabilities into the emerging reference data management market.
Before Fame, he was founder, president and CEO of Benton Associates, a global consulting, software solutions, data management and quantitative analytics company acquired by Fame. He certainly has hands on experience of the acquisition trail and its consequences.
Richards has also previously held senior product and client-facing positions with Algorithmics, Reuters and Interactive Data.
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