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[January 04, 2006]

Thompson Financial buys Chicago software company

(Stamford Advocate, The (Stamford, CT) (KRT) Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Jan. 4--Stamford-headquarted Thomson Corp. has agreed to acquire Quantitative Analytics, Inc., a Chicago company that provides financial database software to institutional investors.

The privately-held company will be folded into Thomson Financial's Investment Management unit, said Eric Frank, a global managing director at Thomson who heads the company's investment management business.

"It's very much a hand-in-glove acquisition," Frank said. "We've known the company for a long time. We share many customers in common."

All of Quantitative Analytics' 50 employees, including its management team, will become part of the Thomson Financial's Investment Management group, which primarily serves institutional investors such as hedge and mutual funds. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Quantitative Analytics' software is used by hedge, mutual and pension funds for securities selection, modeling, back-testing, portfolio construction and trading strategy development, Frank said.

The software integrates multiple data sources, including proprietary customer data, to create a database of financial information for customers, as well as to provide analytical tools to "mine" the database for insights and trading ideas.

While Thomson has historically provided data to the financial community, with this acquisition it can now offer a tool that is meant to help investment managers build their portfolios using quantitative analysis.

"For our customers it further drives the one-stop shopping we are trying to provide, which is very compelling to this marketplace," Frank said.

Driven primarily by hedge funds, quantitative analysis has grown tremendously as a popular tool that institutional investors use try to beat the markets. There are large hedge funds that use quantitative analysis techniques exclusively to drive their strategy and trades, said Frank.

Plenty of mutual fund and pension funds use quantitative analysis as well, he added.

"It's safe to say clients expect (quantitative analysis) and managers are finding that it's more and more important to have it because of the growing choices in the investment world," said Deborah Weir, president of Wealth Strategies, a Greenwich-based financial services firm. "Clients expect portfolio managers to be quantitative. They expect the intellectual rigor of quantitative thinking."

A tool like this should be well received because it gives investment managers an edge in building portfolios, which is especially important in a flat market, she said.

"The indexes have been flat, so any excess returns have come from securities selection," Weir said.

The acquisition, which will close in the next few weeks, will enable Thomson to tap into one of fastest growing segments of the marketplace, said Frank. And bringing Quantitative Analytics into Thomson will help the small software company grow.

"They have 200 customers, we have 5,000 to 6,000," Frank said.

Selling the company to Thomson is an opportunity to take Quantitative Analytics to the next level, said Bill Aronin, Quantitative Analytics' president and chief executive officer.

"We feel this acquisition is the perfect next step -- bringing together the best content and analytics and the broadest customer base in the industry," Aronin said.

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