Advent Software, makers of the Moxy order management system, plunged headfirst into the research management business with its purchase of Tamale Software.
Advent plans to offer Tamale’s research management tool as a standalone product to gain new customers. But the acquisition also lets Advent link portfolio and research management functionality.
“We saw a very exciting opportunity for us to essentially integrate with the research management solutions and bridge that gap between the front office and the back office,” says Pete Hess, executive vice president and general manager of the Investment Management Group at Advent.
Tamale, which released its latest version of its Research Management Solution in August, specializes in developing software for investors to access and organize research and investment information rapidly from a central hub. This makes that research much more readily available and share-able across an investment team, Hess says.
It lets portfolio managers explain their investment decisions to clients and auditors, he adds. “And then they also are able to process ideas much more effectively across their teams, because the information is much easier to share,” Hess says.
One source familiar with the OMS business says Advent’s high profile acquisition of Tamale helps the research management space gain momentum. Portfolio managers lacking a research management solution may hear that the technology does more than just manage the information deluge.
“There are a lot of cool ways to manage information and make it relevant to the PMs,” says the source, declining to be identified. “They can not only get the [research] and manage it, but also start to benchmark whether the guys making the phone calls from the brokerage community are actually good.”
With this, he adds, research management technology lets institutions link the ideas and information they receive to their commission allocation structures. The better PMs’ research and ideas are organized, the source says, the better they can allocate their own research spending.
Advent purchased Tamale for $70 million. The acquisition consisted of 60 percent Advent common stock and 40 percent cash.
It is the second such linkage between an OMS provider and a research management firm. Thanks to a partnership in April, Linedata Services’ OMS LongView now offers access to Norbury Financial Systems’ research management platform, Norbury Links.
Tamale is expected to retain its more than 70 employees, working in offices in New York, Boston, San Francisco and London.
