New York market data technology firm Wombat Financial Software has acquired Harco Technology, a London-based company that provides market data usage reporting and compliance software to financial services firms. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Harco's Data Access and Reporting Tool (Dart) enables users to analyse the expenditure of market data services delivered to trading floors or Web portals and identifies unused services that can be switched off. The application is used across over 70 trading floors worldwide.
Wombat says it will combine Harco's usage and reporting product line with its Entitlements System to offer firms an off-the-shelf exchange entitlements and usage reporting system.
The combined system can be offered as a stand alone product in addition to being implemented with the Wombat market data distribution platform or with other common market data platforms.
Stuart Harvey, Harco's managing director, says: "By combining Harco's product lines with the Wombat Entitlements System, we can together add significant value to our current client base and address the needs of a much larger market share."
Ron Verstappen, CEO of Wombat, adds: "This acquisition, along with the fact that we had already spent time integrating our products, gives customers a much more complete and integrated solution - in addition to being able to just take components of the entire solution incrementally."
The acquisition comes at a time when many securities exchanges are cracking down on license abuse as market participants increasingly re-package digital content for off-floor personnel and alogorithmic trading purposes.
The London Stock Exchange reported a £6.4 million exceptional settlement with Citigroup at the end of last year following an investigation into under-reported data usage at the global investment bank.