Morningstar has announced a $10 million acquisition designed to bulk up
its research database of hedge funds and separate accounts.
The Chicago-based
company announced it has entered into a definitive agreement to
purchase the institutional hedge fund and separate account database
division of InvestorForce Inc., a Wayne, Pa.-based financial software
and integration company.
The cash acquisition is scheduled to be completed in August, according to Morningstar.
The purchase
includes InvestorForce's Altvest database, described by Morningstar as
one of the first and largest online databases covering active hedge
funds, managers and data, and InvestorForce's institutional separate
account database.
The acquired data
will be combined with Morningstar's existing research
database-increasing Morningstar's hedge fund coverage from more than
3,000 active funds to about 6,000, according to the company. The
separate account data acquisition will add 1,500 separate accounts to
Morningstar's database, bringing it to a total of 6,000.
As part of the
agreement, InvestorForce will license Morningstar's hedge fund, mutual
fund and separate account data for InvestorForce's Web-based enterprise
platform, which is used by pension consultants to manage the positions,
transactions, analysis and reporting or their plan sponsor clients.