Visible Alpha, a startup helping analysts and fund managers cope with regulatory changes, has landed further investment from HSBC.
Earlier this year, the company closed a $38m investment round from new investors Goldman Sachs, Banco Santander, Exane BNP Paribas, Macquarie Group, Royal Bank of Canada and Wells Fargo. The round also featured additional capital from its founding investors, Bank of America, Citi, Jefferies, Morgan Stanley and UBS.
Visible Alpha is using the investment proceeds to drive its growth and leadership position in delivering transparent, efficient and alpha generating investment research solutions to its clients and helping them meet the research valuation and budgeting requirements of MiFID II.
More than 450 research providers are now actively participating on the platform, along with over 100 buy-side firms with a combined AUM of $16trn. Along with the investment, HSBC will add its research analyst models to the Visible Alpha Insights platform and contributing to Visible Alpha Consensus Data.
David May, global head of research at HSBC and advisory board member said: “Visible Alpha has rapidly become a leader in helping both the buy side and the sell side overcome the myriad of challenges involved in creating and disseminating investment research. We look forward to working with them to provide a valuable service to our clients.”
Founded in 2012 by Bank of America, Citi, Jefferies, Morgan Stanley and UBS, Visible Alpha is looking to transform the way Wall Street firms collaborate on research, financial models and other services. The company leverages machine learning and other advanced technologies to analyse and bring together data from analysts, providing tools to fund managers to help interpret it.
The business was launched in the run up to the second Markets in Financial Instruments Directive (Mifid II), which now means fund managers must now pay for research, rather than receiving it for free as an incentive to trade.
Last year, Visible Alpha purchased London-based RegTech company Alpha Exchange in preparation for MiFID II. By adding Alpha Exchange’s advanced technology platform to its existing services, Visible Alpha created a ‘unified consumption and collaboration experience’ across research reports, analyst models and corporate access events backed by a robust compliance framework.
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