Ipreo in the News
26 Nov 07
Ipreo Acquires Institutional CRM Specialist
re: NSIGHT acquistion New York - November 28, 2007 - Electronic new-issue platform and data vendor Ipreo has acquired New York-based NSight, which offers enterprise-level customer relationship management (CRM) software and services to financial firms, for an undisclosed price. As part of the deal, NSight CEO Neil Hyman and CTO Jeff Lewis will head Ipreo's research, sales and trading division.
New York-based Ipreo's products are used by large global investment banks to automate and streamline their initial sales efforts, allocations and processing of initial public offerings and new bond issuance. NSight, whose flagship product, iStar Workstation, also focuses on streamlining the sell-side workflow of institutional sales, research and trading personnel, counts top-tier investment banks among its customers as well.
Ipreo, majority owned by private equity firm Veronis Suhler Stevenson (VSS), is the result of a series of mergers and acquisitions. VSS, the majority owner of London's Hemscott Group since 2004, initiated Hemscott's December 2006 merger with i-Deal. Days later, the resulting entity, controlled by VSS and called Ipreo, closed on the acquisition of London-based Marketpipe, which, like i-Deal, provides systems that offer investment banks and issuers the ability to electronically view and share information on new bond and IPO equity deals.
Ipreo products include electronic book-building applications for issuing bonds and stocks; event management systems; and an investor relationship management platform, Ipreo IRM, that is powered by Bigdough, a database containing institutional funds' contact names and profiles. Bigdough was acquired in the Hemscott merger; Ipreo integrated Bigdough's CRM suite with i-Deal's workflow in May.
Ipreo aims to use the NSight acquisition to add to its contact database and related functionality, creating a best-of-breed IRM platform by combining NSight's CRM technology with Bigdough.
NSight's iStar database has more than 96,000 contacts and offers detailed profiles on more than 11,500 institutions, including over 4,500 hedge funds. The data includes comprehensive information on corporate management and fund-level share ownership, provided by NSight partner Georgeson Shareholder Analytics.
"The beauty of this union will be in the marriage of the NSight software with Ipreo's data and analytics," said Hyman. "Ipreo's Bigdough has long been known as the best data for institutional contacts and profiles. What NSight really brings to the table is more comprehensive CRM functionality designed specifically around and for the workflow of institutional capital markets professionals, including trading system integration, research distribution and client delivery systems" through an intuitive interface.
"Bigdough's strength has always been as a prospecting tool for reaching the buy side, with CRM as a secondary element," Hyman added. Its integration "with the NSight CRM will result in a true next-generation investor relationship management solution."
With iStar, institutional salespeople, traders and researchers can manage their clients on a single system, according to NSight. The workstation aims to make it simpler and faster for staff to exchange relevant, "actionable" information regarding new-issue distribution. Institutional client names are standardized, which prevents errors in processing new-issue securities that result from firms using different names for buy-side institutions or issuers.
"Institutional salespeople manage their client relationships more effectively by having in one place their contact information, investment interests, portfolio holdings, trading history, and complete history of all client touch points," Hyman said.
IStar is built on the Microsoft .Net platform, which NSight says manages installations and updates, captures user activity and manages security. The system offers prioritized call-list generation and research distribution; automated calling is done through its integration with Tapi or PBX interface phone systems, and via the Instant Daytime Dialer service from NSight partner Client Instant Access.
The new-issue e-syndicate market has heated up recently, due to dealer demand and regulatory moves. An increased focus on the automation of new-issuance processing was prompted by rules proposed by the Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board (MSRB)--originally set to take effect Jan. 31, 2006--that will require dealers to report muni bond transactions conducted in the primary market within 15 minutes of awarding pieces of the deals to buy-side institutions.
MSRB said yesterday that it is extending until June 30, 2008--the deadline had been pushed this summer to Jan. 1, 2008--the expiration date of its three-hour exception to 15-minute reporting, a delay that MSRB said will give dealers time to get up and running on Depository Trust & Clearing Corp.'s (DTCC's) New Issue Information Dissemination System (NIIDS). DTCC will require that dealers use its new underwriting platform, of which NIIDS is a part, when it is fully implemented, in April 2008, according to MSRB. DTCC plans to eventually expand NIIDS to cover most other new-issue fixed income, including corporate bonds and asset-backed securities.
By Shane Kite
