Thomson Reuters Takes Aim at the Buy Side

Last week's announcement that Thomson Reuters was to acquire Redi Holdings, primarily known for its RediPlus execution management system (EMS), was as clear an indication as any that the New York tech giant had the buy side firmly in its sights.

The Redi portfolio will be completely integrated into Thomson Reuters' suite of Eikon products and the Elektron platform, further bolstering its buy-side offering following previous upgrades made earlier in the year.

In March, the firm completed its multi-year project to consolidate a range of data, analytics and applications catering to buy-side firms onto its Eikon data terminal, to provide users with a single access point for data.

Three months later, Thomson Reuters partnered with vendor OptionsCity Software to introduce functionality that allows energy and commodities traders to execute futures and options orders directly from the Eikon trading platform.

The Redi acquisition then can be viewed as the culmination of Thomson Reuters' efforts to optimize its offering for the buy side; clearly much forward planning and development has gone into this strategy.

One of the most interesting outcomes of the Redi acquisition is that it will put Thomson Reuters squarely in competition with Bloomberg's EMSX system, not to mention the other established vendors in the execution management space, such as Fidessa, Charles River, Portware and Eze Software, which all have significant product and client bases.

While Thomson Reuters may not see any immediate uptake from the buy side as a result of the Redi acquisition and it's more recent enhancements, it's more likely that over time results may become apparent from those already using the Eikon dashboard.

While Bloomberg has long been the leader in the EMS space, Thomson Reuters believes that by acquiring a respected provider like Redi, it might help gain new attention from the buy side, in addition to bringing on Redi's client base. The Eikon desktop already boasts sizeable user numbers; the addition of deeper, proven execution functionality and end-to-end trading across asset classes will surely be of much greater interest for asset managers scrutinizing their current execution capabilities.

My US colleagues Anthony Malakian and Dan DeFrancesco also discussed the Thomson Reuters and Redi deal in last week's podcast.

Side Notes

• If you've been anywhere near social media, or even just own something as mundane as a pair of eyeballs, you'll know that this year's SIBOS conference is in full swing. I am not there this year, as I'd probably end up choking someone with a cuckoo clock after the first day's 37th speech on the future of payments, but my erstwhile Inside Reference Data colleague, Jo Wright is. Keep an eye out for some of her chocolate-scented dispatches from Geneva.

• Donald Trump's comments on cyber security from Monday's Presidential debate. Just...what?!

• John Oliver's take on the Wells Fargo fiasco. We may share a name, but he's far funnier than I can ever hope of being.