It was at the beginning of 2003 that Standard & Poor’s sold its real-time data feeds business – Comstock – to what was to become Interactive Data Corporation in order to concentrate on its then core businesses – ratings, evaluated pricing, reference data. Now, with a lot of water under the bridge, it’s back in the world of cutting edge data feeds and low-latency technology in general with its acquisition of QuantHouse.
Terms weren’t disclosed of course, but S&P Capital IQ – essentially the information division of S&P, headed by former Bloomberger Lou Eccleston – is acquiring QuantHouse not only to provide low-latency data to its customers but also to “build our own unique real-time monitors, derived data sets and analytics.” The goal is to offer “one integrated low-latency feed for all our data, including fundamental, fixed-income, equity and derivatives.”
The QuantHouse acquisition is the latest for Eccleston’s unit. It recently gobbled up analytics vendor R2 Financial Analytics and is in the process of completing on the purchase of Credit Market Analysis from CME Group, as part of a joint venture with the exchange and Dow Jones focused on indices. Indeed, QuantHouse’s feeds and technology will play a big role down the road in delivering those indices to algorithmic trading applications.
QuantHouse brings to S&P a number of components, including low-latency data feeds and transaction infrastructure, FPGA-accelerated feed handlers, and algorithmic trading tools. The company’s 90 employees in Paris, London and New York City will join S&P.
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