LLM firms come for finance, BMLL gets bought, LSEG users get Preqin feeds, and more
Black cats and golden leaves, glowing lanterns, and wicked deeds. Thin as a razor, the veil will be; the witching hour dawns as the clock strikes three.
Happy Halloween, from my house to yours.
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### Nordic Capital to Acquire BMLL for $250 Million
This week, private equity investor Nordic Capital announced its agreement to acquire BMLL, a provider of historical order book data and analytics, for $250 million.
The investment will be made in close partnership with the management team of BMLL and Optiver, a minority shareholder and market-maker. BMLL plans to use this investment to further expand its global venue coverage, extend historical data depth, and grow multi-asset class capabilities, aiming to offer the market a differentiated alternative to incumbent market data providers.
With Nordic Capital’s support, BMLL will also seek to strengthen its go-to-market strategies and deepen partnerships with exchanges, technology platforms, and market infrastructure providers. The existing management team, led by CEO Paul Humphrey, will continue to lead the business and remain shareholders.
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### LSEG and Anthropic Partner on Financial Data for Enterprise Claude Users
The London Stock Exchange Group (LSEG) has partnered with Anthropic to provide access to financial data licensed through LSEG products—such as Workspace and Financial Analytics—to users of Anthropic’s Claude AI platform. This integration will be available through the newly expanded Claude for Financial Services offering.
LSEG aims to enable customers to automate financial analysis using its AI-ready content, accessible through Anthropic’s Model Context Protocol.
This partnership highlights a growing trend: tech companies are increasingly embedding themselves within the financial services industry. Anthropic, which launched Claude for Financial Services in July, now gains access to LSEG and Third Bridge data, while OpenAI, the creator of ChatGPT, has reportedly hired 100 ex-investment bankers to train its AI on building financial models in a secretive project codenamed Mercury.
Mercury involves former professionals from Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, and Morgan Stanley who are compensated $150/hour to create prompts and develop financial models for various transaction types—mostly with minimal human interaction. OpenAI has granted them early access to its AI, which is designed to replace entry-level roles at investment banks.
This situation paints an interesting picture: it’s the second time in less than five years that the financial industry, which prides itself as a cutting-edge tech sector, has been outpaced by the actual tech industry, all while maintaining a facade of friendship. One wonders—will sanity ever prevail?
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### The Mild-Mannered Englishman Who Was the World’s Most Prolific Ghost Hunter
A Halloween cooler wouldn’t be complete without a ghost story—my favorite kind of tale.
In this excerpt from Ben Machell’s *Chasing the Dark: A 140-Year Investigation of Paranormal Activity*, Machell explores some of the unexplainable cases investigated by Tony Cornell. Cornell was a skeptical Cambridge man who studied telepathy, paranormal activity, and other psychic phenomena during the latter half of the 20th century.
Ghost stories are found worldwide, appearing in many flavors but sharing remarkably similar textures. They weave a thread through various geographies, religions, ethnicities, and time periods. These stories reveal our anxieties and hopes.
In fact, my hometown, a small dot in upstate New York, has its own White Lady—a common figure in folklore often described as a woman in a long, white flowing gown. We call her Widow Susan.
I believe in ghosts, literally and figuratively. After all, what is a memory if not a ghost?
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Happy Halloween and stay curious!
https://www.waterstechnology.com/trading-tech/7952774/llm-firms-come-for-finance-bmll-gets-bought-lseg-users-get-preqin-feeds-and-more
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