Integrity Research

Potential Research Pain Eleviation: Provide a resource to help in the procurement of research from firms directly involved with certain Researh themes of interest to your analysts. For example, Integrity Research will help you find the research providers intimately involved in the research of Diagnostic companies. With Sell-side firms steadily reducing their coverage this would be a good tool to identify and screen independent research providers who are filling in these areas.

Company Description: Initially founded in 2000, Integrity Research Associates, LLC offers leading edge research, insightful analysis, objective ratings, and customized consulting to help meet the business needs of senior executives at investment banks and brokerage firms, portfolio managers at buy-side institutions, and hedge fund managers. A few of the company's primary services includes:

• Syndicated Research and Ratings
  
• Customized Research Selection and Monitoring Services
  
• Related Research Industry Analysis and Publications
  

Personal Evaluation: My understanding of the service is that it has two components that might be of use to the Research Department. The first service offered by Integrity Research is there Research Evaluation Database (RED). The Database provides a quick analysis of over 400 Research Providers in the form of a single page report on each research provider that presents a snapshot of the company based on a limited number of key indicators like number of clients, headcount, key management, research methodology, coverage universe, sector coverage, headquarters and offices, contact information, and website URL. The database also offers ratings for the research providers in several categories that will help analysts evaluate whether they should subscribe to their research. Another intriguing part of the database are the Converage Universe Reports. These reports will showcase research providers who excel in certain coverage areas and would allow our analysts to focus in on the research providers that might best serve their research needs based on a Theme or Industry that they are focusing on. This product would be ideal for firms involved in Global Equities to evaluate research providers outside of the US that have a better knowledge of the themes, industries, and companies that will be able to provide a more unique insight than traditional research on the street.

Another part of the service is a consulting component. Integrity Research works with the consumers of the research to develop a program to find the best Research Providers for a firm based on that firm's investment style, analytical approach, and portfolio makeup. Essentially they will take a look at your firm and than search a larger database with more companies than the one's listed in the RED to find the Research Providers that fit the way you perform research and evaluate stocks to be put in your portfolio.

Pricing: An annual subscription to Inegrity Research is $36,000 which includes the use of the database and 50 hours of analysts' time to conduct ResearchSelects. They could essentially be used as a resource for all of your portfolio managers as they looked for unique, value-added sources of ideas and information. They also do "one-off" ResearchSelect for a particular analyst or portfolio team for $10,000 which includes a thorough analysis of one sector or investment controversy. The Coverage Universe Reports are generic reports available to all subscribers of Integrity Research which covers the best Research Providers in a particular broad industry (ex. Small Cap Research providers) and are $5,000 a piece for non-subscribers. The difference between the two is the level of customization involved in building the reports.

All costs can be soft-dollared and the subcription is for four seats. This would allow multiple sector groups to utilize the resource with one person responsible in identifying the research providers that will best suit their groups research needs.

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GLG News

GLG News is a new product being offered by Gerson Lehrman that allows Analysts to tap into Gerson's network of consultants without using the phone. The product works in three different ways.

1.) The consultants that are part of their network will find an article on the Internet that they think would be relevant to the investment community. They than write there own analysis of the topic that pertains to the article. The analysis offers a link to the article so you can reference what they are speaking about.

2.) Research analysts can submit an article that they would like to have a consultant comment on. The analyst is asked to include a link to the article that they are submitting and then the consultants read the article and provide their expertise whenever they think they can add information.

3.) Using the GLG News platform you are able to set-up a phone consultation with analysts that comment on certain articles. Essentially, you can qualify subject experts through their writings in GLG news and then you can easily set-up a consultation by using a link in the system.


Relevant Features

• A fully searchable database of past consultants postings. You can easily search over 7,500 different entries to find information that consultants have already posted on. This is expected to increase rapidly in the future as Gerson starts to tap into more of their network to add posts
• An organized Subject Taxonomy. Consultants tag their articles based on a taxonomy that has been developed over time. You can easily find articles that pertain to a subject area that you would like to monitor. They also tag their entries based on the companies that are referenced in the articles that they are reviewing. Currently this only relates to companies traded on the American exchanges but they are expanding into international exchanges in 4 to 6 months.
• Subject, company, and consultant watchlists. The technology allows you to easily set-up a watch list for any of these three areas. If a new article is posted that is any part of your watchlist you will receive an email with a link to the article posted by the consultant.
  Email capabilities. GLG News allows you to email the full content of an analysis on GLG News. If you find an article that you think is relevant to other members of your sector group you can easily send their review to other members of the Research Staff.

Ease of Use

I found this technology pretty simple to use. I think the Watchlist feature is especially creative and could be of benefit to analysts interested in monitoring different subject matter. The one drawback is that they do not offer 'Keyword' search watchlists which would be of benefit for more obscure topics that an analyst might want to monitor.