Allow me to re-introduce myself

News of the Month

Microsoft and the London Stock Exchange Group (LSEG) announced a 10-year strategic partnership. Microsoft also purchased approximately 4% equity stake in LSEG through acquisition of shares from the Blackstone / Thomson Reuters Consortium. The deal follows a similar strategy to Google’s $1B investment in CME Group, which also included a 10-year partnership to move the exchange operator’s trading systems to the cloud, and AWS’s multi-year partnership with Nasdaq to build the next generation of cloud-enabled infrastructure for the world’s capital markets.

Reuters, Press Release

M&A

• Artefact acquired Arca Blanca (data consulting).

• Japan Exchange Group (JPX) acquired SCRIPTS Asia (investor event data).

• London Stock Exchange Group (LSEG) acquired Acadia (post trade).

• Quantifeed acquired ALPIMA (portfolio management software).

• Symphony acquired Amenity Analytics (NLP analytics).

• United Fintech acquired Cobalt (FX and digital assets data).

• 3E acquired Toxnot (supply chain platform).

Fundraising

• Deepgram (automated speech recognition) raised $47M in a Series B extension led by Madrona.

• Acin (operational risk management) raised $24M in a Series B from a consortium of banks including JPMorgan, Citi, BNP Paribas, Barclays, and Lloyds.

• 9fin (debt capital markets analytics) raised $23M in a Series A+ led by Spark Capital.

• Primary Portal (capital markets deal information) raised £5.3M in a round led by Dutch Founders Fund.

• Keboola (dataops) raised $4.5M in a Seed round led by Presto Ventures.

• Nomad Data (data scouting service / AI) raised $3.2M in a round led by Struck Capital.

People Moves, Promotions, and Appointments

• John Abbot joined Dataminr as CFO.

• Kevin Anderson was promoted to Head of Asia-Pacific at State Street Global Advisors.

• Arul Balakumaravel joined Visible Alpha as VP of Operations.

• Meredith Binder joined Novata as CMO.

• David Harks joined Balyasny Asset Management as Director of Enterprise Data.

• John Ikel joined Morgan Stanley as Executive Director, Data Sourcing.

• Sirisha Kadamalakalva joined Citigroup as Global Head of AI Investment Banking.

• Martin Koopman was promoted to Chief Product Officer at Broadridge.

• Jonas Laeben joined Precision Alpha as Chief Revenue Officer.

• Patricia McLean joined Moody’s Analytics as Managing Director, Marketing Programs.

• Zain Mesquita joined ESG Book as CFO.

• Beth Meyer joined Novata as Chief Legal Officer.

• Michael Muhlbach joined NielsenIQ as Director, Financial Services.

• Anna Murray joined Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan (OTPP) as Senior Managing Director & Global Head of Sustainable Investing.

• Arib Rahman joined Ashler Capital as Head of Research Process & Analytics.

• Steven Reichard joined BattleFin as SVP & Head of Business Development.

• Art Steinmetz joined the Advisory Board of MarketReader.

Who’s Hiring

• Bobsled (Cloud) is hiring a Director of Engineering.

• Dun & Bradstreet (Information Services) is hiring a SVP, Commercial Operations.

• FinTech Sandbox (FinTech) is hiring a Partnerships Director.

• J.P. Morgan (Financial Services) is hiring a Fintech Partnerships Executive Director.

• Northern Trust (Financial Services) is hiring a Chief Data Officer for Wealth Management.

• Teledoc (Healthcare) is hiring a Chief Data & Analytics Officer.

• Vanguard (Financial Services) is hiring a Head of Financial Advisor Services (FAS) Data Strategy.

What I’m Reading

• Eagle Alpha 2022 Alternative Data Report: A Year in Review by Eagle Alpha.

• Alternative Data M&A is Heating Up: Looking Back and Ahead by Michael Mayhew in Integrity Research. Guest post by Mikheil Shengelia of Eagle Alpha.

• Algorithms Chasing Algorithms: AI Complicates Securities Cases by Katherine Forrest in New York Law Journal (paywall).

• What Founders Need to Know Before Selling Their Startup by David Jegen in Harvard Business Review.

• Deciphering the Great Research and Data Deluge - the Buy-Side’s Future Competitive Battleground, by Vicky Sanders in TabbFORUM (paywall).

• PitchBook Universities: Top 100 Colleges Ranked by Startup Founders by Jordan Rubio and James Thorne at PitchBook Data.

• Hedge Funds Raised Bets Against Bitcoin Miners by Laurence Fletcher in the Financial Times.

What I’m Listening To

The Alternative Data Podcast hosted by Mark Fleming-Williams

• The Etna Research Episode (December 18, 2022)

• The AILiftOff Episode (December 11, 2022)

• The G2 Episode (December 4, 2022)

• The Exchange Data Episode (November 27, 2022)