Thomson Reuters has acquired Moody’s Investor Services’ municipal bond pricing service. The transaction, in which Thomson Reuters effectively takes over Moody’s distribution agreement with U.S. muni bond data supplier Mergent Inc., rounds out the offerings of Thomson Reuters’ Enterprise data business line.
Details of the transaction weren’t available at press time.
In response to questions, however, Thomson Reuters says the acquisition will “enable us to launch a proprietary US municipal bond pricing capability.” Says Thomson Reuters: “It also completes our broad pricing and content offering, giving us full pricing coverage for every major asset class globally.”
Moody’s has been refocusing its information services offerings toward the credit markets in recent years. As such, its desire to shift out of municipals coverage is not entirely surprising.
The company forged an agreement with Mergent, then part of Xinhua Finance, to distribute its municipal bond pricing services back in 2007. As part of the dismantling of Xinhua Finance, Mergent spun itself off in a management buyout a year ago, and established itself as an independent supplier of municipal bond and other descriptive price information.
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