Effective today (December 3, 2024), New Jersey-based financial technology firm, Castine, LLC announced the acquisition of Paris-based research management platform provider, ResearchPool.
Details About ResearchPool Acquisition
Castine announces its acquisition of ResearchPool, a developer of software systems that enable investment managers to manage, search, and leverage the investment research they originate internally, as well as all external research they obtain from their sell-side brokers and independent research providers.
Currently, ResearchPool has hundreds of brokers and independent research firms contributing millions of research reports to their platform, providing access to thousands of users, who are all entitled and managed by the site. In addition to current users, there are over 10,000 users of the “Markit Hub” (formerly “Bond Hub”) that ResearchPool acquired from IHS Markit in 2021, who will now have access to the platform.
Robin Hodgkins, President of Castine, commented on the rationale for this acquisition saying, “We already facilitate the payment of hundreds of millions of dollars for research; ResearchPool’s ability to manage research that an investment manager creates, as well as interactions and external broker- and IRP-created research is a natural extension for our hundreds of investment manager clients.”
Pedro Fernandes, President of ResearchPool, says of the deal, “Working with Castine to provide access to our research management tools side-by-side with their commission management, invoicing, payment, and compliance suite creates a lot of opportunities for growth for ResearchPool.”
ResearchPool’s operations will continue to be led by Pedro Fernandes and will be a wholly owned subsidiary of Castine. Additional terms of the acquisition have not been released. The acquisition is scheduled to close in mid-Q1, 2025.
About Castine
Founded originally in 1982, Castine, LLC is a financial technology firm run by serial entrepreneur Robin Hodgkins. Prior to Castine, LLC, the firm’s principals worked for Cogent Consulting, the provider of industry leading broker vote and commission management systems. In 2009, Cogent sold these products to BNY Convergex, which are now owned and operated by SS&C/Eze Software.
Since Castine’s team completed the handoff of the products they sold to ConvergEx, Castine, LLC has developed and launched a wide range of web-based systems for the financial services sector, including for broker compensation, client profitability, commission management, research invoicing and payments, and compliance due diligence systems for the research firms, trading counterparties, and IT vendors employed by buy-side firms as well as CSA and trade reporting systems for the asset managers themselves.
About ResearchPool
ResearchPool was originally established in July 2015 as one of the first European research aggregators in the lead up to the roll out of MiFID II. The firm was founded by two former NYSE Euronext executives, Pedro Fernandes and James Woodley, using an Amazon-like approach to research distribution.
The firm’s original research aggregation platform saw modest success attracting close to 400 firms contributing over 2 million research reports. Contributors are diverse, including fundamental company research, technical analysis, macro, credit, commodities and ESG.
In 2021, IHS Markit decided to retire its research portal, Markit Hub (formerly Bond Hub). IHS Markit and ResearchPool partnered to invite Markit Hub’s more than 10,000 users to join the ResearchPool platform.
Since the firm’s founding, ResearchPool has expanded its suite of product offerings from its original research aggregation platform (content management system), adding a research management system, a CRM, and a data management system.
Our Take
Castine’s acquisition of ResearchPool makes considerable sense as it enables Castine to expand the products it can sell to its existing client base of more than 500 broker-dealers and buy-side firms. The deal also gives ResearchPool greater international reach to market its products to prospects in the US and Asia.
The Castine / ResearchPool deal is interesting as it closely follows the deal between competitor Commcise’s parent Euronext and Substantive Research, a UK-based research and market data benchmarking services provider. While the Euronext deal is quite different than the Castine acquisition, it is clear that both firms are using the pressures seen in the UK and EU research industry to expand their businesses.
Regardless, the ResearchPool acquisition is enabling Castine to grow from a fintech firm that offers a platform to pay for investment research into one that also manages both the internally produced and third-party research used by the buy-side, moving from the back office to the front office.
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