The annual UK dealing room survey by Kimsey Consulting forecasts a ten per cent increase in trading IT spend for 2004.
The report, which questioned participants with direct responsibility for the trading technology needs of 15,000 positions, values the UK market for dealing room IT at £2.7 billion
Although the study is predicting the first general increase in demand for several years, the UK market is still an estimated 30% lower in value in comparison to the late 1990's. The study also shows that trading IT spend is shifting toward annualised revenue accounting, reflecting the importance of cost control as operations managers work to maintain up to date systems.
Among the market data vendors, says Kimsey, Reuters continues to lead the pack with approximately 40% market share, and an approximate 50% share of all information service budgets. The number two player is Bloomberg, with a resurgent Moneyline/Telerate in third place and Thomson Financial in fourth. Reuters achieves the highest customer satisfaction ratings in seven of the 11 prompted criteria, though Bloomberg achieves the best score overall.
Among dealboard vendors, Syntegra and IPC are the two largest players in the UK, although Etrali achieves the highest overall level of customer satisfaction.
And finally, a spot of shameless self-promotion. More than half of trading IT managers cited Web-based news services as the most important source of trading technology developments/news - with 97% naming Finextra as their top resource. "And there was no prompting", says a clearly stunned Stephen Kimsey.