Dale Richards, incoming CEO at market data vendor Fame Information Services, has welcomed a new investment from private equity company and majority shareholder Warburg Pincus and unveiled plans to radically shake up the business.
Richards, who was formerly in charge of Fame's financial markets division, took over the top slot from incumbent Gerald Mintz two weeks ago. His appointment at the time was welcomed by Stewart Gross, a Warburg Pincus senior managing director and a member of Fame's board of directors.
The value of the new Warburg funding has not been revealed. The company says the money is to be used for "restructuring".
Announcing the shake-up, Richards says: "The market’s moving quickly from a 'home-grown' solution orientation to a vendor-provided solution orientation as customers seek cost savings and focus on their key strengths. We’re doing the same."
The restructuring calls for Fame’s vertical market-specific business divisions to be replaced with functional departments and "market-specific segment strategy teams". Richards has also annointed a new executive management team, including Neil Edelstein, Dominic Innaccone and Paul Mattison.
The organisational changes were broadcast to the company’s 300 employees in offices in the US, Europe and Asia in an internal announcement on 9 April.
Edelstein, who joined Fame in April 2001 as senior vice president, marketing, for its financial markets division, now has global responsibility for all sales, pre-sales, marketing, product and account management for Fame’s energy and financial markets segment business. From 1993 to 1998, he was president of Muller Data, a $45 million data warehousing, software development, and financial information firm.
Iannaccone, senior vice president, development and currently responsible for global operations and development, adds responsibility for global software data hotline service management and data integrity, consolidating company-wide development, operations and technical support. He joined FAME in August 2000 from Inventure.com, developers of financial and energy trading software, where he was COO.
In addition to serving as CFO, Mattison immediately assumes direct responsibility the firm’s consulting services, "a change in reporting that reflects our strategy and intent to grow our consulting services as a more autonomous and independent-minded business unit, with a focused P&L", says Richards. Mattison joined Fame in September 1999 as CFO after eight years at The Thomson Corporation, where from 1997 to 1999 he served as CFO of RIA Group.