Sell-Side Technology Awards 2014: Best Sell-Side Technology Provider of the Year — Markit

All good things must come to an end, or so the saying goes. This is especially pertinent to Markit, given that this year, the London-based data specialist failed to win what has come to be known over the years as “its category”—the best data management product—for the first time since 2007. That’s an impressive record and one that is unlikely to be equaled anytime soon.

But it’s not all doom and gloom for the vendor started by Lance Uggla and a core of credit default swap (CDS) traders from TD Securities in London just over a decade ago, where the entity they spun off—Markit Partners—specialized in the production of transparent and reliable CDS pricing data that wasn’t available to the market at the time. The model was as effective as it was simple: CDS dealers would send their end-of-day prices to Markit, which homogenized them overnight and sold them back to the banks the following morning so they could get a sense of how the market was pricing certain CDS instruments. Much has transpired in the ensuing decade, to the extent that now, Markit can legitimately claim to be one of the industry’s largest data players, rubbing shoulders with the likes of Bloomberg and Thomson Reuters.

This year, Markit leaves the Sell-Side Technology Awards with two wins: best newcomer, thanks to its Integrated Resource Management (IRM) product, enabling firms to calculate and optimize the cost of funding and capital resources of their over-the-counter (OTC) trades; and best overall technology provider to the sell side. The vendor’s growth, both organic and acquisitive, has been mesmerizing, much of which is due to the broadness of its technology stable—over the years it has acquired Cadis, Trade EQM, Data Explorers, and recently, London-based thinkFolio, arguably the savviest move of the lot—and its metronomic ability to add new names to its client roster. If any data and technology provider in the capital markets space deserves the epithet of “luminary,” Markit is it.

Now, Markit can legitimately claim to be one of the industry’s largest data players, rubbing shoulders with the likes of Bloomberg and Thomson Reuters.