Retiring, But Not Shy

By successfully executing this strategy over the years, we now deliver a comprehensive set of products and services to serve the needs of the front, middle and back offices at some of the largest global financial institutions. We also provide services to thousands of active traders and individual investors. These offerings, which include independent fixed-income evaluations, global reference data, sub-millisecond data for algorithmic and electronic trading applications, sophisticated analytical tools for investment managers and workstations for professional and active traders, are used by our clients for mission-critical investment and financial activities.

So, while I expect that smaller, niche vendors and other organizations such as exchanges will continue to emerge to serve different market needs, it will be challenging for them to overcome these barriers and compete effectively on a broad scale.

To illustrate this, we are focused on expanding our core capabilities to serve specific client needs, particularly in four key growth areas: valuation, risk management and compliance, transformation of the trading room, and wealth management.

For valuation, we are continually expanding our data coverage, recent examples being evaluations for GNMA serial notes backed by 100 percent Puerto Rico collateral, and independent valuations of derivatives, such as interest rate swaps. We are focused on providing tools and information to help clients manage risk and compliance, including the data we deliver to help clients comply with MiFID and to prepare for the accounting rule FAS 157. We will continue to expand our low- and ultra-low latency offerings so they can support sophisticated trading strategies, and will optimize our workstations and portals for the global wealth management segment.

To address these market conditions and meet the ever-evolving needs of clients, we will continue to look at ways to expand our coverage of "hard-to-value" securities and alternative investments. Providing independent evaluations for millions of fixed-income securities has long been a cornerstone of Interactive Data's business, and we will focus on strengthening our position in this segment of the market.

We will continue to examine how we can combine the value of our Pricing and Reference Data and our Fixed Income Analytics businesses. For example, we currently offer fixed-income analytics via a bulk file feed, which helps customers centralize content for investment applications and facilitate risk management. Under our "One Company" initiative, we will look into other opportunities to unify the products and services of all of our businesses for the benefit of our clients.

ComStock is an example of this, as it brought complementary capabilities-real-time datafeeds-that helped enable Interactive Data to round out its services, and also eliminated our dependence on third-party suppliers for this real-time content.

Over the next five to 10 years, we will continue to focus on our core strategy, with the objective of driving similar growth, further expanding our capabilities to meet the evolving needs of our clients, and reinforcing our position as a trusted leader in financial information.

Clark: Our objective is to find the best executive possible to lead Interactive Data-one who will be able to further our mission of being a trusted provider of financial information and analytics to our clients, help ensure that our employees view Interactive Data as a great place to build a career, and continue to execute on a growth strategy that delivers value to our shareholders.