Thomson Reuters Signs Three-Year Eikon Deal with the ECB

In one of the largest single new contracts for its flagship market data platform, Thomson Reuters has signed a three-year deal with the European Central Bank (ECB) to roll out Thomson Reuters Eikon desktops across the ECB and 18 participating national central banks.

According to Thomson Reuters, Eikon had 42,000 users at the end of January. The ECB deal should add several hundred more users to the Eikon platform. The deal is also the largest market data purchasing initiative managed by the Eurosystem Procurement Coordination Office (EPCO), which has a role to foster the participation of the ECB and the national central banks in joint procurement actions. At press time, the exact number of seats the ECB will use was not known.

The 18 participating national central banks are Nationale Bank Van Belgie, Deutsche Bundesbank, Central Bank of Ireland, Bank of Greece, Banco de España, Banque de France, Banca d’Italia, Central Bank of Cyprus, Banque centrale du Luxembourg, Magyar Nemzeti Bank, Central Bank of Malta, De Nederlandsche Bank, Oesterreichische Nationalbank, Banco de Portugal, Banka Slovenije, Narodna Banka Slovenska, National Bank of Romania and Suomen Pankki-Finlands Bank.

Thomson Reuters Eikon is designed to provide a next-generation solution for consuming real-time and historical data, connecting with the financial markets community and executing financial markets transactions across asset classes, such as foreign exchange (FX), fixed income, commodities, equities and derivatives, according to Thomson Reuters. Eikon utilizes powerful semantic search engine technology and carries real-time data, news, charts, commentary, analytics and trade execution tools through views that can be customized to individual user preferences and workflow.

[For more on Thomson Reuters Eikon's search capabilities, read: Semantic Search Takes Thomson Reuters Eikon to New Levels.]

"Thomson Reuters is incredibly proud to form this long-term partnership with the European Central Bank in order to roll-out Eikon desktops across many of Europe's central banks," said Peter Moss, managing director of Trading, Thomson Reuters, in a press release. "We are getting great feedback from our customers regarding usability and performance in Eikon as well as excitement around innovations we are making in areas such as search and visualization. Our customers recognize how simple we have made it to navigate and analyze the unrivalled depth of content we have which alongside key social tools and advanced analytics makes for a very powerful one-stop solution."

"The European Central Bank is always looking for ways to improve access to market information, encourage collaboration and increase cost efficiencies for its members. We appreciate Thomson Reuters Eikon as a powerful financial markets desktop that makes it easy for our users to find and analyze the information they need and connect with their peers, both at their desk and through mobile devices," said Mora Golding from the European Central Banks’s market data management, in a statement.

[For more on the history of Thomson Reuters Eikon, read: Thomson Reuters Eikon: What Went Wrong?.]

Greg MacSweeney is editorial director of InformationWeek Financial Services, whose brands include Wall Street & Technology, Bank Systems & Technology, Advanced Trading, and Insurance & Technology. View Full Bio