The acquisition of Interactive Data (IDC) by Intercontinental Exchange (ICE) will make ICE the third largest market data vendor after Bloomberg and Thomson Reuters. It will also increase exchanges’ market data revenue, which in 2014 rose 12.05% to $3.26 billion. In the same period, traditional data vendors grew market data revenue by 4.07% to close on $27 billion.
Despite the 2014 gap in market data revenue between exchanges and traditional data vendors, Burton-Taylor International Consulting, a specialist in the financial market data space, expects further convergence of market data sales and distribution to increase competition between traditional vendors and exchanges.
The consultancy forecasts the future of the financial market data industry in a report entitled ‘Global Market Data Convergence – 2015’, which shows a five-year compound annual growth rate of 3.3% for traditional market data revenue and 6.3% for exchange market data revenue.
Breaking down 2014 market data revenue generated by traditional vendors, the reports shows that the Americas accounted for 46.2%, ahead of EMEA on 36.3% and Asia on 17.8%. Asia showed the greatest growth at 6.64% and EMEA the least at 1.74%. In terms of market segments, investment management and fixed income sales and trading delivered the strongest growth in 2014, driven by the need for pricing, reference and valuation data.
