I think 2010 will be the year when buyside firms really get organized about tracking their Corporate Access services from the sellside.   There are a few trends making this likely.

• Critical mass.  After a few years of Wellington and SAC being the only guys driving this bus - there are now a sizeable number of buyside firms tracking what meetings they take so their traders can better figure out who to pay.  This further drives other firms to join the trend.
• They are getting help with new and cheaper tools.  Voting tools used to be exotic - but they are getting simpler and cheaper - and powerful meeting tracker services act as vote support systems or ersatz vote systems.   These are now being marketed by many firms which is just raising the awareness on the buyside.
• Corporate Access (and direct contact with analysts) gets ever more valuable - and guesswork is no longer a basis for buyside firms to allocate payment.

CAM is doing its part too.  We are the best way for brokers to report their meetings - by a long way.  In fact the only way to get into some of these buyside systems. Just doing our bit to help our sellside clients get paid.

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 25th, 2010 at 4:36 pm and is filed under Investor Events. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.