S&P Capital IQ and Exchange Data International (EDI) have combined their respective North American and global data to deliver a consolidated global dividends and corporate actions service that will support risk management with timely and accurate corporate actions information. The move catapults the companies into competition with Interactive Data, Bloomberg and Thomson Reuters.
The global corporate actions service was released last month in response to customer requests to consolidate the global corporate actions, dividend service and shares outstanding service delivered by EDI through its Findataportal and the S&P Capital IQ North American dividends data service also delivered through the portal.
The companies worked together to consolidate the feeds and will both market the consolidated solution. To date, they have garnered a few clients in the US, two in Europe and more are in the pipeline.
Penny Nash, senior director of Enterprise Solutions at S&P Capital IQ, says: “The consolidated service is a compelling offer. It crosses the front, middle and back offices and combines both a depth of data and powerful analytic tools that be used by both the buy side and sell side. For example, e-mail alerts on corporate actions can be sent to the front office, the feed can be used to support portfolio management and it can also be used for quantitative work based on its back history.” She adds: “To compete with the likes of Bloomberg, Thomson Reuters and Interactive Data we needed global corporate actions in a one-stop shop.”
The global dividends and corporate actions service spans 128 countries and 150 exchanges. Users can search, screen and download announcements on over 50 corporate actions and distribution event types for over 1 million listed securities and over 45,000 funds.
Jonathan Bloch, CEO at EDI, explains: “This is the first time clients will receive our global corporate actions and dividends data alongside the S&P Capital IQ North American corporate actions and dividend service in a consolidated feed that will allow them to view primary and secondary listings across the globe in the same format.”
At S&P Capital IQ, the corporate actions service is part of the company’s Enterprise Solutions business, which also includes pricing data, cross reference data, fundamental data and real-time equity pricing that was acquired with QuantHouse in April. The acquisition of QuantHouse filled the real-time gap in S&P’s capabilities, leading the company to consider how it can combine the corporate actions service with QuantHouse real-time technology. The development has no timeline as yet, but Nash suggests the service, which is currently updated three times a day, will move on to intraday updates and ultimately become a real-time service.
