Telerate was a US company providing financial data to market participants, specialising in commercial paper and bond prices. It was a pioneer in the electronic distribution of real-time market information in the 1970s. With its main innovation being to extend the technology that was used to obtain live stock prices, via Telequote, Quotron or Stockmaster to other sectors of the financial industry, such as corporate debt, currencies, interest rates and commodities.[1]
The company was founded by Neil Hirsch and it became a major provider of market data through the 1970s and 1980s. The company was bought by Dow Jones & Company in 1990 but the hedonistic lifestyle of its founders and senior manager clashed with the strait-laced culture of Dow Jones & Company causing issues within Dow Jones. Dow Jones' aim was to use Telerate to compete against market dominant Reuters. However, Dow Jones lost focus and the business was eventually consigned to the backwater of the business. It was sold a number of times and renamed Bridge Telerate and later Moneyline Telerate.
Reuters eventually bought the remains of Telerate in 2005. This saw the end of the company as Reuters absorbed the business into its own market data unit. It also lost numerous customers as many clients chose Telerate as an alternative to Reuters, and they were not happy to have those products now under Reuters’ roof. Some customers had also had advantageous deals from Telerate, and Reuters was not happy to renew them on those terms.[2]
History
Early years
The company was founded in 1969 by Neil Hirsch, a 21-year-old who had been hired by the U.S. broker Merrill Lynch, with two million of venture capital.[3]
Neil Hirsch later attracted new investors, including Bernie Cantor, owner of a government securities broker Cantor Fitzgerald. The company saw strong growth because of the innovative technology and relatively low costs of the service compared to main rivals. However, the success and new wealth allowed Neil Hirsch to indulge in what was described by Telerate insider John Jessop "as a hedonistic lifestyle that involved drugs and alcohol in quantities that some observers saw as life-threatening".[1]
Co-owner Bernie Cantor attracted much early controversy by using Telerate as a vehicle for advertising his company's trading prices, the first broker to do so, attracting the anger of many of its customers including such Wall Street giants as Merrill Lynch, Bankers Trust and Chemical Bank
References
- John Jessop. Telerate History retrieved May 5, 2014^
- Samara Zwanger. Bye-Bye, Telerate Waters magazine, February 1, 2005^
- Dow Jones Telerate, Inc. History International Directory of Company Histories, 1995