Tokyo Diary 3

Just completed today's Tokyo Financial Information Summit program. My colleague Rob Daly and I will have a lot of coverage on the WatersTechnology and Inside Reference Data pages in the coming days, and there will be more in-depth analysis in the October issue of Inside Reference Data.

As mentioned in the first entry of this diary, the Tokyo market is protective of its market share, naturally, and in today's discussions pointed to the value of other local parties or participants in the Japanese markets. Namely, local market data vendors have a distinct advantage because the Tokyo markets and their data are all conducted in the Japanese language, notes Wayne Schmidt, head of market data technical services, Asia, at Nomura Securities.

This makes it a challenge for an outside data vendor to gain a foothold in the market, and an even bigger challenge for banks and financial firms looking to consolidate their data feeds, and thus get a better handle on both market and reference data, especially if a firm is trying to manage data from multiple markets.

This point was made during a discussion of spending trends and strategies involved in managing data. I'll have some closing thoughts on this trip in a final diary entry after returning home.