FirstRain Partners With FactSet Research
October 27, 2008
FactSet Research Systems is integrating FirstRain's Web-based research and qualitative analytics into its Marquee real-time market data platform.
Norwalk, Conn.-based FactSet provides financial information and analytical tools to the investment community. Users of its Marquee system can now access the FirstRain platform, which combs online sources such as blogs and news sites and aggregates the data, as part of their regular workflow.
The deal marks San Mateo, Calif.-based FirstRain's second major alliance with a financial data provider--in April it made its offering available to Capital IQ customers. According to Penny Herscher, FirstRain president and CEO, the agreement with Capital IQ, a Standard & Poor's subsidiary, "made everyone pay attention."
The content FirstRain gathers isn't immediately available by just surfing the Web, said T.J. Jetnil, director of market data and research management sales for Marquee. "It is a supplement to the information and tools we offer our more than 10,000 clients. A user can stay within our product and be passed directly into FirstRain's platform or even go out of our product and onto FirstRain's platform."
Herscher noted that "FactSet clients can interact with FirstRain as a window within FactSet. ... Whatever company a portfolio manager is working on, once the system has the ticker symbol, FirstRain will bring up our view." More than 100 firms are using FirstRain, including ING Investment Management, State Street Corp. and Tudor Investment Corp. "We have many clients in common with FactSet," said Herscher.
Clinton Anderson, investment analyst at Overland, Kan.-based Meritage Portfolio Management and a customer of both companies, said in a statement that "FirstRain consolidates data from the Web on our portfolios, sectors and industries. Integrating FirstRain with the analysis I do in FactSet provides a more complete picture of the market."
Marquee clients--70 percent of which are on the buy side--receive news, pricing data and sell-side research, according to Jetnil. The product aggregates hundreds of databases, giving fundamentals and estimates--"we even offer Thomson Reuters databases, plus the Russell and S&P 500 index products," he added. "Users can see a number of different data sets, software and tools to make research data more efficient." Customers can move the information over to an Excel spreadsheet or use pre-built applications to do securities analysis.
FirstRain, an eight-year-old, privately held company, has over 150 employees and offices in New York and Gurgaon, India. "We've been in contact with FirstRain for years, following its progress in terms of its technology," Jetnil said. "Now that FirstRain has its own platform, it made it easy to offer their service on our platform, without a lot of integration problems."
"The analytics offered with Marquee are numerical: financial results, markets and pricing," said Herscher. "Our product includes management quotes in the press--what's being said about the company the client is following."
