"Five Things Revealed by Markit’s IPO Filing"

From MoneyBeat:

One of the U.K.’s fastest-growing financial firms, Markit, has lifted the lid on its business after filing its 71-page prospectus for an initial public offering in the U.S. last night.

The London-based firm, founded in 2003 by former credit trader Lance Uggla (you may remember him from this post on stripping bankers) to provide prices in an opaque credit derivatives market, has diversified into providing data on other asset classes too. It even made a bid to buy LCH.Clearnet, formerly the London Clearing House, and has acquired 25 businesses worth £1.8 billion ($3 billion)  since it was founded.
It previously filed confidentially with the SEC thanks to the U.S. Jumpstart Our Business Startups Act, which makes listing easier for smaller firms.

Here are five things to know, according to its prospectus:

Where do its revenues come from?
Markit has three main business lines: information, processing and solutions. It has over 3,000 clients, including banks, hedge funds, regulators, corporates and central banks. Information services accounts for the majority its revenues (48.5%, or $459.6 million in 2013, the filing showed). This is the business Markit was built on: Mr. Uggla, a former global head of credit trading at TD Securities, spotted an opportunity to aggregate data from the major credit dealers in the early 2000s and Markit launched its flagship CDS valuation service in 2003. It now provides data across asset classes, which is used for research, valuation, trading and reporting. Its processing division, which confirms and processes derivative, FX and loans trades, accounted for 28% (or $265 million) of revenues in 2013. Its solutions business, which primarily provides web hosting services, accounted for 23.5% of revenues.

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