A new Edinburgh-based research distribution platform is seeking to create a marketplace where research can be sold and purchased transparently. The new platform, Electronic Research Interchange (ERIC), was launched earlier this month and is said have fund managers from over 100 asset managers worldwide registered on the site.
“We have in the region of 25 research providers already posting research items on the site, ranging from one man independents to full service brokers, with many more in the pipeline,” said ERIC co-founder Chris Turnbull. One of the research providers is co-founder Russell Napier, a former CLSA strategist whose global macro analysis will be exclusively distributed on the platform. Napier will also provide a free fortnightly Global Macro update for registered users of ERIC.
Each research provider effectively has their own ‘micro-site’ on the platform and fund managers are permissioned by the research provider once they have agreed to terms and conditions. Similar to eBay, ERIC gives research providers the ability to set a ‘Buy It Now’ price and to give fund managers the opportunity to ‘Make an Offer’ for research. ERIC also facilitates auctions for scarce resources such as analyst access or meetings.
Co-founder Chris Turnbull was previously an Investment Director at Standard Life Investments and has worked latterly at Instinet and at ICAP BlockCross. Russell Napier was a strategist with CLSA Asia-Pacific Markets for almost twenty years and was previously a fund manager at Foreign & Colonial and Baillie Gifford. ERIC’s anonymous third investor donated his holding to a charity allowing him to retain an interest without gaining any financial benefit, therefore removing any conflict with his senior role at an Edinburgh-based asset manager.
The full press release is below:
1st October 2014
ERIC — the home of unbundled research opens for business with exclusive free content from Russell Napier
Russell Napier and Chris Turnbull, the co-founders of ERIC (Electronic Research Interchange — www.eri-c.com), today launch a new option in the procurement of substantive investment research and analyst access to investment professionals. In response to growing demand from professional investors for the menu pricing of research, ERIC provides access to thousands of pieces of individually priced research from leading providers.
According to co-founder Chris Turnbull, Former ICAP broker and previously an Investment Director at Standard Life Investments, ‘ERIC offers research from an impressive roster of providers from small Independent Research Providers (IRPs) and brokers alike, who realise that professional investors are changing how they spend their research budgets… this business is not about how fund managers access research, it’s more about how they find it, value it and pay for it.’
Subscribers to ERIC will gain access to a free fortnightly market commentary by Russell Napier, formerly of CLSA, author of Anatomy of The Bear and director of The Practical History of Financial Markets graduate course. Napier’s quarterly research report ‘The Solid Ground’, which has been analysing global macro trends for almost twenty years, will be sold EXCLUSIVELY through ERIC.
‘The industry needs a platform where sellers and buyers of individually priced research can transact. ERIC is such a platform and I am delighted to be involved in ERIC at a time of so much change in the financial services industry.’- Russell Napier
Chris Turnbull echoes this confidence in presenting the right product at the right time, ‘THE FCA is asking professional investors to look closely at how they consume and pay for research and ERIC offers the solution, allowing them to source research on an at-need basis. Full transparency on research consumption and spending through ERIC can then be offered back to the end client.’
The platform has already drawn support from a number of investment managers, both large and small, who see value in widening their research procurement options in an uncomplicated way. In the words of Russell Napier, ‘I hope that many institutional investors will register to access my free fortnightly market commentary and in the process see the high quality research that ERIC has to offer before making it their first stop for unbundled research needs.’
The company logo is Eric the knight, a piece from a Viking chessboard carved almost a thousand years ago and discovered, with his friends, on a beach in Lewis in the Outer Hebrides. Like the knight in chess, ERIC aims to use its unique ability to jump ahead over other pieces and, as the Vikings did, ERIC comes to change things but ultimately to settle a new land. Our Eric, now sporting a dapper bowler, has been updated to give him that twenty first century Viking look. ‘They’re back but this time with sensible hats,’ commented Russell Napier.
ERIC is an independent business owned by Russell Napier, Chris Turnbull and a Scottish charity- The Creich Charitable Trust. Russell Napier is proud of the association and confident of the benefits that lie ahead, ‘Creich is a major shareholder in the business and we hope will profit from its holding and thus be able to continue its work supporting many charitable ventures in Scotland and well beyond.’
Click here to view ERIC-LAUNCH
For more information please contact:
Chris Turnbull 07887717423 cturnbull@eri-c.com
Russell Napier 07775920134 rnapier@eri-c.com