To what extent has Symphony emerged as a viable competitor (or alternative) to Bloomberg? What might the planned LSE/Refinitiv combination signal for the future of independent financial data (and/or communications) providers?

Do you agree or disagree with the undertones in the FT article that a risk management system of Aladdin’s scale holds systemic importance? How should regulators monitor the platform? Do you buy the thesis that a widely accepted, uniform risk modeling platform might lead to increased ‘herd’ behavior and system fragility?

If data is the new oil, what new opportunities (beyond those discussed in the lecture)  might exist to provide data and analytics to the asset management industry? What opportunities might exist for asset managers to monetize their data? What are the potential trade offs or conflicts that might emerge from this new revenue stream?

In his recent biography, Blackstone founder Steve Schwarzman wrote: “The most important asset in business is information.  The more you know, the more perspectives you have and the more connections you can make, which allow you to anticipate issues.”  Why have private-equity firms been relatively slow to replace their millions of excel spreadsheets with a convergence of software and business processes? What has prevented them from building unified data and modeling platforms for their businesses? Will a third party solution (such as eFront) emerge to gain ubiquity in the industry (think ‘MS Office’ for PE), or will the software landscape remain fragmented (and largely empty)? 

If you were creating a hedge fund, long-only asset manager or PE fund from scratch and possessed ample development resources, how would you approach the software and business design of your fund?