Core financial-data tools remain locked behind access to subscription data cartels

Evidence

An essential piece of software I use is Refinitiv Workspace (currently being rebranded as LSEG Workspace), which is designed for investment bankers to access financial markets data such as real-time stock prices, market trends, annual reports, and SEC filings. It is owned by the London Stock Exchange Group (which also owns the globally influential stock exchange in its name), and is, according to Sarah Lamdan, a key “data cartel” of financial information along with Bloomberg and LexisNexis. Access to this software is prohibitively expensive and I am fortunate that the UCSD library maintains a subscription, allowing me to gather historical data on mergers, acquisitions, asset managers, hedge funds, stock buybacks, executive compensation, derivatives, and other metrics that have been elusive to many researchers of the media industries. — Andrew deWaard, Derivative Media, 42

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reader’s project on tracing financial instruments from Wall Street to artistic form, where this data-access asymmetry is a methodological precondition.