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

Talking Reference Data with Andrew Delaney: Markit-Asset Control – New Dawn Fades

Subscribe to our newsletter

The buzz around Markit’s alleged interest in Asset Control reached fever pitch a week or so ago when an anonymous caller to Reference Data Review suggested the deal was done and Asset Control’s senior management relieved of their duties. But just a few days after we went public with speculation of a transaction, the deal appeared to unravel, and in a shock development Asset Control CEO Phil Lynch has this week emerged as head of global account management at SunGard – Asset Management.

Spokespeople for both Markit and Asset Control have declined to comment on or indeed confirm the existence of any discussions about a transaction. But talk that Fidelity Ventures had finally found an acquirer for Asset Control has been on the enterprise data community’s lips for the past three weeks. Given Lynch’s departure, a statement on the matter might be a good course of action for the data management specialist to take. Just sayin’.

By way of reassurance, we don’t typically take anonymous calls too seriously, particularly in the midst of takeover discussions. I recall – in an earlier life – the arrival of a mysterious fax warning my staff at the time that I was about to fire the lot of them to make way for an acquirer’s own people. It had the (presumably) desired effect: my staff quickly formed a line outside my office to demand some answers. Who could blame them?

In this instance, though, market snippets on Markit’s interest were coming to us thick and fast. It truly appeared to be a done deal. Until, that is, a lone naysayer suggested the deal was no deal, and that Lynch was out. Come Sunday afternoon, he’d updated his LinkedIn profile. Seems our contrarian source had very good connections.

Notwithstanding the mechanics of the situation, it’s not clear why Markit walked away or where this leaves Asset Control. I’ve already hinted on my Twitter feed that Markit’s head may have been turned by more important matters. These may include the possibility of picking up some elements of Thomson Reuters, which some believe may have an appetite disposing of some non-core assets as part of its ongoing streamlining of operations, a process apparently already culpable for 3,000 layoffs this year.

With Lynch gone, it’s unclear who is running Asset Control. While keeping schtumm on the Markit gossip, the company issued a release this week, hailing its selection by Erste Bank as enterprise data platform. The release quoted Mark Johnson, Director of Sales EMEA, Asset Control. Conspicuous by their absence were Lynch, for obvious reasons, but also John Mitchell, vice president, global sales and marketing, whom our anonymous caller had assured us would remain as part of the team to be melded into Markit. Either of Lynch or Mitchell was featured in every Asset Control press release in 2012.

It’s unclear what the fallout will be from Lynch’s departure. Presumably, Fidelity Ventures will move swiftly to plug the gap at the top. Mitchell and Lynch were part of a management team that also included CFO Peter Bennfors, general counsel Claudia Giunta-Coello, human resources chief Arend Leutscher, VP for services Robert Revesz and VP of product management Tim Versteeg.

Almost three weeks after we first heard rumblings of a transaction, we hoped by now to write a definitive piece on what transpired. Instead, we have more questions than answers.

This one may have more to run.

Subscribe to our newsletter

Related content

WEBINAR

Recorded Webinar: Best practice approaches to integrating legacy data with the cloud

Acceleration of cloud adoption, increasing demand for digital transformation and real-time data management have led financial institutions to rethink their data infrastructure to enable more agile operating models that can respond faster to change and make data a competitive advantage. For many, integrating data from legacy systems and data across the business landscape with a...

BLOG

Moody’s and Google Cloud Partner to Build Large Language Models and Generative AI Apps

Moody’s Corporation and Google Cloud have made a strategic partnership to explore a combination of Moody’s expertise in financial analysis and Google Cloud’s generative AI (gen AI) technologies to help Moody’s customers and employees use large language models (LLMs) to gain financial insights and summarise financial data faster. This is Moody’s second key partnership on...

EVENT

RegTech Summit New York

Now in its 8th year, the RegTech Summit in New York will bring together the regtech ecosystem to explore how the North American capital markets financial industry can leverage technology to drive innovation, cut costs and support regulatory change.

GUIDE

Regulatory Data Handbook 2023 – Eleventh Edition

Welcome to the eleventh edition of A-Team Group’s Regulatory Data Handbook, a popular publication that covers new regulations in capital markets, tracks regulatory change, and provides advice on the data, data management and implementation requirements of more than 30 regulations across UK, European, US and Asia-Pacific capital markets. This edition of the handbook includes new...