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Instinet Inks Distribution Deal With Norbury
April 9, 2008
Agency brokerage Instinet said today that it has entered into a partnership with Norbury Financial Systems, a Boston-based research management software provider. Under the deal, Instinet’s research sales group will distribute the Norbury Links research automation platform to its institutional clients.
Analysts and fund managers use the subscription-based Links as a central repository for in-house and third-party research. The platform allows users to store information such as e-mails, contacts, notes, transcripts, spreadsheet models and market data and tag it for easy retrieval and real-time collaboration, says Norbury.
It is New York-based Instinet’s first such agreement with an entity that is not a content provider, said John Pitt, research director of Instinet Research Partners. Pitt noted that his division’s core strategy is to sign exclusive distribution agreements with independent research providers. “We’ve built up a presence in the marketplace amongst buy-side institutional portfolio managers and analysts, and we’re in a unique position to sell” Links to that marketplace, said Pitt. “But more than anything else, we thought it would be helpful to our clients.”
Norbury’s co-founder and CEO, Dan Dykens, explained that his company will be “leveraging Instinet’s internal sales capability and leveraging their connections with portfolio managers, traders and analysts to sell our software.”
Dykens said that “the deluge of information in the marketplace has become increasingly overwhelming to portfolio managers and analysts from institutional clients of all types. Norbury Links helps to mitigate this overflow by automating the research process, which helps institutional investors focus on key investment intelligence.”
When Norbury, which was founded in 2005, has established a strong presence on desktops, it plans to launch an independent research distribution platform, which is already being developed, said Dykens. “We will then be in a very unique position where if clients want this … we know what research is important to them and we can filter through the universe of independent research and promote independent research for sale and start to change the way [it] is distributed by really promoting an a la carte model to the buy side.” Though Norbury is building the platform on its own, revenues will be shared with Instinet.
The distribution agreement with Instinet is “a bit of a ‘Trojan horse’ approach,” said Dykens. “Once we have lots of desktops we can start to promote independent research directly to the end user.”
Instinet’s Pitt noted that “in becoming involved with Norbury, we are taking an option on that second phase of development. And if the research distribution platform is developed and successful we’ll be in a very good position to make an important contribution to that and to benefit from it, because we do have extensive contacts in the independent research industry.” Though the potential development of the distribution platform is included in the deal, the details have not yet been worked out, said Pitt.
Michael Plunkett, president of Instinet North America, added in a statement that “there is more high-quality research and other information available to portfolio managers and analysts than ever before,” and that the industry’s challenge is “to efficiently manage and organize this information flow so it can be leveraged firm-wide. We believe Norbury Links is a superb solution and that our research clients will find much value in it.”
On Monday, Paris-based Linedata Services also said that it is offering clients of its LongView Trading order management system (OMS) access to Norbury Links. The alliance will help Norbury further expand its reach--LongView customers include ten of the 25 largest asset management firms.
