The Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation (DTCC) has acquired the outstanding 72% of Avox, a reference data company previously owned by Deutsche Bourse.
According to Patrick Kirby, managing director of DTCC, the acquisition is part of DTCCs drive to provide customers with the full suite of value added data capabilities.
Speaking to GlobalCustodian.com, Kirby explained that DTCC clients were pushing the firm to address the legal entity space. DTCC already covers corporate actions, issuance and securities master data.
According to Ken Price, CEO of Avox, the data company had been discussing at board level for 24 months for a way to obtain greater industry ownership of Avox. Explaining the move from Deutsche Bourse to DTCC, Price felt that the German exchange was shifting its focus to algorithmic trading, and that back office data had taken a back seat.
Both Price and Kirby were positive about the possibility of leading the dialogue to create an industry standard for company related data. Although Kirby made it clear that dialogue is essential in order to agree on an industry standard it is always far easier for the industry to adopt your own standards, rather than the other way round.
We are driven to what the industry wants in terms of standards, said Kirby. Sometimes those standards are our standards, sometimes we have to adopt others as we are doing in the corporate actions space by migrating from our proprietary messaging codes to the ISO20022 messaging standard. We listen to the industry. We react to the industry, and anywhere we can drive a standard we will look to do that. It wont be any different in this space.
The purchase of Avox, one of the leading reference data companies, puts DTCC in good stead to become the loudest voice in the conversation towards an industry standard for company data.
The all-cash deal is valued at a low double-digit million GBP figure. Deutsche Bourse previously owned 72% of the company. The two founders of Avox, Ken Price and Steve French, who were also minority shareholders, will head the company in the capacity of chief executive officer and chief operating officer, respectively
Avox clients includes financial firms such Citi, Barclays, Nomura International, Standard Bank, Mizuho, Allianz, Eurex, SWIFT, Mitsubishi UFJ and Royal Bank of Canada.