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IHS Markit and Hazeltree to Combine Datasets and Treasury Solutions, Delivering Alpha-Generating Investment Management
07 July 2020
In the midst of historical volatility, investment
managers are looking for every edge to improve returns while
simultaneously managing liquidity and overall counterparty and
market risks.
It isn't easy - this is particularly evident as managers seek to
identify differentiated, data-driven, alpha-generating trade ideas.
These ideas are set against a backdrop of costly and time-consuming
challenges including portfolio finance and funding requirements,
daily cash and liquidity positioning, minimizing collateral and
margin posted while meeting all agreement terms, optimizing a
multitude of rates, and controlling counterparty exposure and
risks.
To respond to the demands that investment managers are facing,
IHS Markit has teamed up with Hazeltree to provide a
differentiated securities finance dataset that is relevant and
value accretive to any alternative asset manager.
For more insight on the collaboration and how it helps managers,
we spoke with Paul Wilson, managing director and head of Securities
Finance at IHS Markit, and Sameer Shalaby, president & CEO at
Hazeltree.
Why are IHS Markit and Hazeltree joining
forces?
Paul: The collaboration between our firms
creates a unique opportunity to marry our collective data sets. As
we dug deeper into our clients' treasury and portfolio finance
challenges, it became clear that Hazeltree possesses a
comprehensive and integrated suite of products that allow
investment managers to evolve towards treasury and operational
excellence, replacing spreadsheets and bespoke systems. In
particular, against the COVID-19 work-from-anywhere evolving
operational model, enterprise-scale treasury and portfolio finance
technology has never been more relevant.
We are uniting IHS Markit's leading securities finance data set
with Hazeltree's unique alternative data set, as well as
Hazeltree's treasury and technology expertise, to provide
investment managers with trading insights that drive alpha
generation and secure the cash and financing to fund trading
activities. IHS Markit has been impressed with Hazeltree's unique
approach, rooted in expertise and experience.
IHS Markit's confidence resulted in a strategic investment in
Hazeltree in October 2019 to support its acquisition of Enso
Financial Analytics, a provider of treasury and data analytics to
alternative investment managers, from CME Group.
What will the alliance deliver to capital markets and
investment professionals?
Sameer: Given the rich functionality that
resides between IHS Markit and Hazeltree, there are many facets of
the enhanced offering that are brought together. In the short-term,
we are focused on two core workstreams:
Seamless integration of Hazeltree Data Insights into the IHS
Markit Securities Finance data suite - this will enable
front-office professionals and quantitative traders to benefit from
this enhanced and unique data set to generate alpha.
Connecting IHS Markit clients with Hazeltree so they can
benefit from our comprehensive treasury and portfolio finance suite
of products.
Over time, we will explore additional synergies to further
integrate various products together, enabling our mutual clients to
benefit from a seamless experience.
How are primary markets going to benefit from this
collaboration?
Paul: Based on what we hear from our customers, one of the
biggest challenges for investment managers is identifying new
alternative data sets with sustained signals strength to provide
actionable trading opportunities. This is especially highlighted
during volatile markets, such as those we are experiencing
today.
To that end, by working with Hazeltree, we are helping trading
professionals gain access to a new and unique dataset that we
strongly believe can assist in identifying alpha generation
opportunities whilst also assisting in optimizing portfolio funding
and financing.
Is this expanded data set available today to IHS Markit
clients?
Paul: Yes, at this time the expanded data set
is in full production and being used by several IHS Markit clients
with positive feedback of its predictive value.
Sameer: Hazeltree is about innovative
approaches and marrying our unique alternative data set with IHS
Markit's comprehensive data and significant market presence will
deliver immediate insight for trading to investment managers of all
sizes. We look forward to future opportunities to integrate our
various products together to offer clients a seamless trading and
operations experience in using our respective products.