Regulatory and market forces are pressing upon old industry business practices in ways that profoundly affect how the market data industry operates in the near term. WFIC is the premier opportunity for members of the industry to come together for a better understanding of both those forces and the most effective ways to respond. WFIC’s two and a half days of sessions, meals and off-site networking events will allow attendees to interact in a neutral environment to develop better communication with the important players in the market data business. The sessions will include a combination of presentations, panel discussions and case studies.
The keynote presentations from Mr. Bishop and Mr. Eccleston will be two of the conference highlights. Mr. Bishop’s opening keynote presentation on October 10 will cover a broad range of issues and their effect on the financial industry, such as the impact of governmental activity and the movement towards transparency on the business environment; intellectual property issues; and macro trends such as globalization, offshoring, the impact of terrorism and the M&A climate. Mr. Bishop will bring unique insight to these topics based on his tenure covering global business market issues for The Economist, which he joined in 1991 as Economics Correspondent. He has held the posts of Britain Correspondent, American Finance Editor, New York Bureau Chief, Business Editor, and most recently, Chief Business Writer in the U.S. He is the author of The Pocket Economist, the official Economist guide to economics and he appears frequently on TV and radio.
Mr. Eccleston will deliver a luncheon keynote on October 10 focused on the obsolescence of traditional business models, based on the fact that the technology highways are strewn with "innovation road-kill" that never fulfilled its promise; exhausted integration budgets, and disparate applications from best-of-breed strategies that don’t speak to each other. He will explain that today's market opportunities are about helping customers create proprietary advantage by leveraging their own portfolio of assets. Mr. Eccleston, a 14-year veteran of Bloomberg L.P. and more recently head of Global Financial Services for Siebel Systems, joined Thomson in July 2002 as President of the Banking and Brokerage Group for Thomson Financial. In November 2003, he assumed the role of President for a new organization within Thomson Financial - Global Sales, Marketing and Services.
