Euromoney signs deal with HSBC - UPDATE

Euromoney Institutional Investor, the FTSE 250 international online information and events group, has signed a binding agreement with banking giant HSBC to acquire its Quantitative Techniques (QT) operation.QT creates and maintains more than 100 equity and bond indices for HSBC's Global Markets division as well as over 60 external clients. Once the transaction has completed after a six month transition phase, HSBC has agreed to purchase index calculation services from QT for a minimum period of three years.Euromoney explained that the acquisition creates an opportunity to build a new business providing independent index compilation services and believes it can expand QT's customer base and encourage other institutions to engage QT to calculate the indices for their own investable index products. The group also plans to use QT's index calculation expertise to develop new index families across other parts of its business."We are delighted to acquire the Quantitative Techniques operation from HSBC," said Richard Ensor, the Chairman of Euromoney. "HSBC is a trusted and important partner as well as a key client. Euromoney looks forward to working with HSBC over the next three years and, it hopes, for many years afterwards to develop the QT business. This acquisition gives Euromoney the opportunity to establish a significant footprint in the attractive index compilation market."The gross assets being disposed of were recorded at zero in HSBC's accounts at the end of December 2012. NR