2008 global information market performance
Jinfo Blog

20th February 2009

By Nancy Davis Kho

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On February 17 US-based Burton-Taylor International Consulting LLC released its research on the global market for information (http://digbig.com/4ygyg) and concluded that the total spend on financial information and analysis globally was flat year-on-year, with industry totals for 2008 at US$23.01 billion versus US$22.99 billion in 2007. International markets fared better than the contracting US market; Asia saw a 20.3% increase in spend in 2008, while Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) grew at just under 7%. By comparison, the Americas contracted by almost 10%. Not surprisingly, Thomson Reuters (TRI) and Bloomberg continue to dominate the field, garnering slightly increased market share in 2008 to 34% and 24% respectively. Even adding the next three players' market share together wouldn't counterbalance the outside dominance of TRI and Bloomberg in the market data industry: FactSet, Interactive Data Corporation (IDC) and SIX Telekurs hold 2.5%, 3.3% and 1.2% global share respectively. Globally, TRI and Bloomberg are number one and number two in each of the three regions. Telekurs holds third position in EMEA, IDC has that spot for the Americas, and Quick has it in Asia. Looking ahead for 2009, the picture doesn't look much better. Burton-Taylor predicts negative 1-3% growth for the industry overall, with the Americas contracting most significantly. EMEA will remain flat though supported by growth in the Middle East and Eastern Europe. Asia's growth is expected to still reach the low to mid-single digits, but that's far lower than in recent years. With their market dominance, TRI and Bloomberg are the vendors who are expected to take the biggest losses to the bottom line. 'Thomson Reuters and Bloomberg will face differing challenges and changing business focuses in 2009,' says Douglas B. Taylor, Managing Partner of Burton-Taylor. 'At TRI, feeding the appetites of the growing "low latency" and risk management monsters, as well as continuing to establish a foothold against strong competitor Dow Jones in the machine readable news market, are key priorities.' 'At the same time, launching a new financial video service and rebuilding equity news to leverage their desktop dominance in the North American Wealth Management space will test the company's ability to both invest and seek overall margin improvement.' Burton Taylor's 2009 global financial information/analysis competitor market share map may be downloaded free of charge by visiting: http://www.burton-taylor.com/research.html and inputting research sample code FINMARKETSHARE2009.

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