Allow me to re-introduce myself
Hi, I'm Dan, and welcome to my newsletter. I've been posting weekly activity on LinkedIn over the past two years, and decided to finally give this whole "newsletter" thing a try.
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.
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)
