Alacra Inc., the leading provider of business information solutions for financial institutions, corporations and professional service firms, announced today a significant uptake of its unique Alacra-on-Demand (AOD) research service from asset managers, hedge funds and private equity firms. Soft-launched in February, AOD is the only service which provides a team of experienced researchers on an ad-hoc, pay-as-you-go basis to conduct specialist research, using the world’s leading business information. The new service has quickly attracted interest from buy-side firms which are looking for a professional level “on-demand” research and analysis service to support their investment decisions. Since the launch of AOD, Alacra has fulfilled requests for custom reports and analysis for hundreds of new clients keen to use Alacra’s outsourced team for access to fast and cost-effective research on complex activities such as cross-border M&A, shareholding momentum and credit research. 

Steve Goldstein, CEO of Alacra, says: “Alacra-on-Demand is the only service which provides on-demand research across such a broad range of information sets; since we announced AOD in February we have seen tremendous interest from the buy-side and we expect to see much more – this is a market that’s really taking off. The research which our team provides is invaluable to firms which need quick access to research information to underpin their investment decisions. One of the reasons this service is so important is the shrinkage of library and support teams.” He adds: “We combine data from Thomson Reuters, credit rating agencies, market research publishers and several economic data/research suppliers to provide a truly comprehensive service.”

Alacra’s highly-trained team of analysts provides a fast, accurate, consultative approach, which often involves a great deal of ‘back-and-forth’ conversations with clients. AOD is exceptionally cost-effective as it is only used when research information is needed, reducing the pressure on in-house research staff. Alacra has unparalleled access to a wide range of content, allowing it to provide an outstanding service.

AOD’s most popular reports have been:

• M&A transaction histories (by industry).
• Cross-border M&A activity reports.
• Shareholding momentum reports which provide analysis on which institutional shareholders are buying and selling a company’s shares.
• Corporate filings
• Research reports from the ratings agencies and sell-side firms.
• Earnings call transcripts and Earnings estimates for groups of companies.
• Municipal bond issuance by state over time.

Information available through Alacra-on-Demand includes:

• Global corporate filings
• M&A transaction data
• Ratings agency credit research
• Sell-side and independent investment research
• Earnings call transcripts and ownership data
• Earnings estimates
• Market research from dozens of publishers