Nordic Capital Acquires BMLL

Interest in the data business is alive and kicking with the news that Nordic Capital is to acquire historical order book data and analytics provider BMLL in a deal of which both parties have agreed not to release the financial terms.

BMLL was founded in 2014 by a group of Cambridge academics, and delivers granular level 3, 2 and 1 order book data across futures, equities, ETFs and US options. It uses a proprietary engineering process to clean, standardise and unify “raw and inconsistent” market data from more than 120 venues into a single, globally consistent format.

“We’ve spent the past decade investing in our data engineering capabilities and building the industry’s foundational layer of harmonised order book data,” says Paul Humphrey, CEO of BMLL. “The greatest testament and validation of our work is the fact that market participants are now building increasingly sophisticated workflows on top of our data. I am extremely proud of everything our team has delivered over the years, cementing our position as the de-facto historical data and analytics provider to the capital markets.”

The existing management team, led by Humphrey, will continue leading the business, the firms state, they will also remain as shareholders. The deal will come with a “meaningful injection of primary capital” into BMLL, providing long-term funding to support continued investment, innovation and client delivery. BMLL says it intends to use this investment to further expand global venue coverage, extend historical depth and grow multi-asset class capabilities, giving the market a differentiated alternative to the incumbent market data providers.

A prime focus of the firm will remain an initiative aiming at building a trusted “golden copy” of high-quality, AI-ready historical market data that enables market participants to make better data-driven decisions across the trading lifecycle, from alpha generation to execution analytics.