Inside Market Data Awards 2012 WINNERS special report
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The Data Party
It was all about data at the annual awards ceremony in New York on 22 May. We even found a stand-up comedian to present the awards, Greg Schwem, who appeared tailor-made for our event-he runs a company called "Comedy with a Byte". The entertainer, dubbed "America's favorite corporate funnyman" by Chicago Magazine, was joined by the cream of the data industry-the market and reference data innovators and achievers.
This year marked the 10th anniversary of the Inside Market Data awards, which recognize excellence in the financial information industry. The first awards began in 2003 with just 12 categories. Since then, Inside Reference Data joined the roster, and new categories have been added to reflect achievements in a broader and more granular range of business areas. The first group of awards includes the vendor categories for best provider in specific areas of market and reference data, the results of which were determined by an online survey of end-users. The second group of awards is a series of call-for-entry categories that were judged by a panel of industry experts and the editors.
On the awards night, we also presented the 27th entrant to the Inside Market Data Hall of Fame. To celebrate IMD's 25 anniversary in 2010, we set up the Hall of Fame with 25 inaugural inductees-one for every year we've been publishing. When we sent out the questionnaire for this year's awards, we invited participants to nominate their market data hero. One name stood out because the nominations came from the people who really count-the customers. David Gershon was named this year's Hall of Fame inductee, praised for founding options pricing software vendor SuperDerivatives-of which he remains CEO-which brought fresh clarity and transparency to illiquid and opaque OTC derivatives pricing.
We offer our congratulations to all the winners and finalists, and look forward to the next year of innovation.
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More on Awards & Rankings
Best market data newcomer (vendor or product)—Octaura
Octaura’s Insights Platform is an integrated market intelligence and analytics offering purpose-built for the leveraged loan market.
Best market data provider (broker)—Fenics Market Data & Analytics
FMD’s Broker Data service draws on BGC Group’s global brokerage operations to provide pricing, trade and order-flow information across FX, rates, fixed income, commodities and derivatives.
Best evaluated pricing service provider/vendor—Infront
Infront Quant supplies independent, cross‑asset valuations with a “white‑box approach”, offering level 1 and 2 transparency.
IMD & IRD Awards 2026 winner’s interview—Smartstream
Smartstream wins Best reference data managed service at the IMD & IRD Awards 2026
Best reference data integration vendor—Gresham
Gresham’s AI-native EDM Suite combines data from disparate sources and systems and provides user-firms with a single point of integration across the data life cycle.
Best ESG data initiative—Bloomberg
Bloomberg’s Impact and Allocation dataset provides investors with a consistent means of assessing how proceeds are being deployed and what outcomes issuers report.
Best AI/machine learning data initiative—FactSet
FactSet unveiled its MCP server in December 2025, allowing secure, authorized access to the firm’s data from third‑party AI tools.
Best corporate actions data initiative—S&P Global Market Intelligence
MCA Plus consolidates specialist datasets, validation and operational oversight across five domains, reducing fragmented workflows and manual processes.
