Capital IQ that offers financial information tools to investors, recently acquired its smaller competitor, TheMarkets.com, thereby strengthening its position in the highly competitive financial data provider sector. Capital IQ is a unit of Standard & Poor’s, which is a division of The McGraw-Hill Companies Inc. (MHP).
 
The terms of the transaction were not disclosed, but according to The Wall Street Journal, Capital IQ paid $300 million to acquire TheMarkets.com, the provider of third party equity and fixed income research, and corporate earnings models and estimates.
 
Capital IQ continues to expand its data offerings and improve functionality despite the recent turmoil in financial markets, and has a client base of over 4,200 worldwide. The inclusion of TheMarkets.com further enhances its global reach by another 2,400 institutional investors worldwide.
 
The clients of TheMarkets.com include 75% of the 50 top U.S. asset managers, 80% of the 50 leading European asset managers, and 75% of the premium 100 global hedge funds.
 
The acquisition will facilitate Capital IQ to provide a comprehensive research package to its buy-side clients, which will not only include fundamental and quantitative research and analysis solutions but will also cover equity and market research reports and earnings estimates with valuation models from leading brokers.
 
The acquisition enhances Capital IQ’s ambit of offerings and it now not only serves investment banks, hedge funds and private-equity firms but also provides complete financial tools to mutual funds and asset managers.
 
Capital IQ, which competes with Thomson Reuters Corporation (TRI), FactSet Research Systems Inc. (FDS) and Bloomberg, was acquired by Standard & Poor’s in 2004 for $200 million, and TheMarkets.com was formed in 2000 to provide sell-side research to institutional investment management firms worldwide.
 
TheMarkets.com was jointly owned by Bank of America Merrill Lynch part of Bank of America Corporation (BAC), Citigroup Inc. (C), Credit Suisse Group (CS), Deutsche Bank AG (DB), The Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS), JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM), Morgan Stanley (MS), UBS Investment Bank part of UBS AG (UBS), and Thomson Reuters Corporation.
 
BANK OF AMER CP (BAC): Free Stock Analysis Report
 
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