Where to start eating the elephant?!

As most of you know, on July 1, Avox became a 100% owned subsidiary of the Depository Trust and Clearing Corporation (DTCC) headquartered in New York. The three months leading up to that date and the time between then and now have been, to put it mildly, crazy.

There are of course all the stresses and strains associated with negotiating a company purchase/sale. These however were significantly compounded by the marked increase in interest for business entity data within the industry. President Obama increased the pressure when he signed the Financial Reform bill in July which includes the establishment of a systemic risk regulator known as the Office of Financial Research (OFR - formerly NIF). Amusingly you will find a mildly derogatory blog entry written by yours truly on NIF earlier this year.

What really catalyzed the market was Avox's acquisition by the DTCC. It is absolutely clear now that this partnership is a great one. Financial institutions around the world recognize the DTCC for what it is - a global, industry owned financial utility with an excellent reputation for efficiency, security and stability. What better home for a business entity reference data utility?

There will be lots to report on going forward. From my new vantage point, I can see some rather significant shifts in the landscape and they are all for the better. The only requirement will be a willingness to change.

Ken

Counterparty Data Provider of the Year

THANK YOU to everyone who voted for Avox for the Inside Reference Data Counterparty Data Provider of the Year award. This is the second year we have won this. It's a real honour. However, the award really goes to our clients and partners who actively participate in the Avox data maintenance process. While we have a super team, solid infrastructure and rigorous verification processes, it is the feedback that we receive every day from clients and partners that alerts us to changes happening to businesses around the world that makes the real difference. Just as we do with our business intelligence, we share this award with you, our clients and partners.

Collaboration works. You prove it every day.

Ken

Inside Reference Data Conference New York

Just taking a break from the conference to catch up on work. My compliments to Incisive Media for getting such a large crowd together this year. You will definitely need a bigger room for the reference data folks next year.
Ken

Transparency???

We're off to a new year and hopefully some new and more positive attitudes towards transparency when it comes to disclosure of basic business entity information. Or perhaps not???

We've been working closely with a number of our clients over the years to verify information about firms registered in "secretive" jurisdictions (that does not mean that they leak by the way). Many of these tend to be in warm climates (although CNBC recently conducted a poll and found that the most secretive jurisdiction on the planet happens to be a little over an hour plane ride South East of Toronto where I'm writing this now - take a look http://www.cnbc.com/id/33591918/?slide=16).

The fundamental problem that we all face in trying to learn about companies we might like to transact with is that many of them incorporate in jurisdictions where they have no obligation to tell anyone else that they even exist. And if these firms don't have to publish anything about themselves, you as a financial institution or client simply need to trust what they tell you. Who's going to argue? Indeed this is one of the reasons that firms incorporate in such jurisdictions.

So the question is this. In such a huge, interconnected, leveraged and complex global economy, shouldn't we adopt some very basic yet universal standards around transparency if we are to minimize the chances or at least impact of another economic crisis? For example, shouldn't it be necessary for every registration authority in every jurisdiction to publish on a read only website, at no cost to the viewing public, the legal name and registered address of all entities registered in their jurisdiction? And shouldn't that registration authority (the one that typically has the legal mandate to prosecure the owners of a firm should they lie) also inform the public if each entity registered with them is active or not? Companies House sets a nice example of this in the UK. This information is also consolidated on Avox's www.wiki-data.com where it has been multiply sourced from various authorities.

This basic data serves as a kernel for a lot of other information however that core bit of data, if reliable and maintained in each jurisdiction by the authority with penalty inflicting power goes a long way to helping everyone converge on what is real, accurate and up to date. We call this Authoritative Source Convergence or "ASC". It's not an Avox product but a general initiative which we are working on with our clients, partners and a growing number of willing Authoritative Sources. This basic level of disclosure is vital for universal business entity identification (read "the holy grail").

Let us (and everyone else for that matter) know if you are interested in joining this initiative. We believe it can make all the difference.

Ken

FIMA London 2009

A busy week, last week. FIMA attendance was down a bit however we at least got back into the City. We missed attendees from Asia and Australia who participated last year however I suspect budget restrictions imposed in 08 had an impact on that.

It was a great pleasure for us to have Jeremy Ruston of Osmosoft spend a few minutes during the Avox presentation to give the audience insight into the power of open source software development. Jonathan Lister, an independent opensource software developer working with Avox pulled off the almost impossible by successfully demoing two live applications over the internet during the presentation (www.wiki-data.com and a custom app developed the night before using the wiki-data API - apps like these never work when you are doing live demos in front of large audiences!).

Thanks to all who joined the party at Prohibition on Tuesday night. The turnout was excellent (>200 people I'd say). Thanks to all the additional sponsors - Asset Control, EDM Council, Interactive Data, GoldenSource, S&P and SWIFT. The bash always makes our business a bit more tolerable.

Based on all the presentations, panel discussions and networking discussions last week, I see the potential for some substantial progress in the standardization and transparency around business entity data in 2010. Watch this blog over the next week or two. We've got some more things brewing.

Ken

NIF - Bark worse than Bite?

It's no secret that I've not been convinced of the "achievability" or desirability of the proposed regulatory infrastructure being proposed by the National Institute of Finance. But you know, I may be mellowing a bit. Here's why.

I bumped into an old business school/Algorithimcs alumni friend of mine in the Toronto airport on Tuesday (Dr. Dan Rosen - the brain with legs). He has been involved in NIF discussions over the past months and was actually the first person to tell me about it.

Well, I took the opportunity to suggest to Dan that NIF was behaving either arrogantly or naively or both. Dan gave me a kind but patronizing look and asserted the following.

"Ken, when the US government shut down Lehman but not AIG, they had no real understanding of whether that was the right move or not. They did not have anything to objectively measure what was the better decision." Crap, that's clear to me... "The objective of NIF is to help generate that understanding", Dan continued.

I immediately and quite cleverly (I thought) countered by shouting "Yes, but these guys are talking about splitting atoms, sending man to the moon and regulatory harmonization. The first two were easy!". Finally, I've managed to achieve some minimal sort of intellectual equity with the Ph.D. who was able to construct, graphically, Mick Jaggar's lips with a gamma graph on RiskWatch while drinking his cappucino and developing new credit risk management algorithms on his dirty napkin.

"Ken, Ken, Ken" (Dan's impatience starting to become evident), "these guys are politicians. They have to talk that way. All NIF wants to do is help increase transparency and provide better decision support.".

Now that makes sense to me. If the NIF folks start talking pragmatically and dump the atom splitting talk, I'm in . Forget about world peace, regulatory harmonization and poltical multi-partisanship. Transparency is the single most valuable objective we can shoot for.

And wouldn't you know it, the dark knight steps up to the plate. Bloomberg, are you serious?

The plot thickens...

Dazed and confused,

Ken

New version of wiki-data is live

I’m pleased to say that the new version of www.wiki-data.com is now live. There is also a link from our website.

Features of this new version:

- It has been developed in open source software which will provide significant flexibility to clients when the client specific version of the site is rolled out.

- Every Avox ID (AVID) is a distinct URI (Uniform Resource Identifier) enabling links to and from the entity record. There are no restrictions on the use of AVID, nor are there any license fees associated with it.

- We have put more data fields into this version of wiki-data including formerly known as name, also known as name, trading status, URL and additional operational address details.

- Users can hide/show columns, sort content in columns, click the AVID and land on a company page with a google map, filter content, challenge data values, request additional data for a record and request new records.

- Limited numbers of additional data and new record requests will be processed at no charge. We will soon have a charging mechanism in place for requesting more data and new records. Existing clients will be able to apply these requests against their existing contracts if they wish.

- There is a facility called “New app ideas” at the bottom of the screen where users can suggest and vote for new functionality.

- An email support function is also included at the bottom of the screen.

We have already started working on the client specific version of this application called “my-wiki-data” which will provide clients with more visualization, query and API functionality. We look forward to getting your feedback on both this public site and the client site as it evolves. Don’t hesitate to call if you have any questions. We hope that this new capability is helpful.

Please note that the email request function on the previous version of wiki-data was corrupted and not operational during the past two weeks. My apologies if you had tried to use that capability and received no response. It is working with this new version.