Financial Industry Leaders Join Forces to Develop a Global Standard for Investment Research

NEW YORK. October 18, 2000.

A group of major financial firms announced today the formation of RIXML.org, a global industry association of buy-side and sell-side firms whose mission is to develop an open standard for the electronic exchange of investment research.

The new specification, to be known as RIXML (Research Information eXchange Markup Language), will be based on XML, the emerging standard for data sharing between applications. RIXML will provide a structure for parsing and classifying investment research in a way that enables recipients to access information in a customizable format through standard sorting and filtering criteria. Once developed through the collaborative efforts of the association's members, the RIXML specification will be made available for use by firms within the financial services industry as well as other interested parties.

The founding members of RIXML.org include:

Asset Managers

American Century Investments
Capital Group
Fidelity Investments
Putnam Investments
T. Rowe Price

Broker-Dealers

Credit Suisse First Boston/DLJ
Deutsche Bank
Goldman, Sachs & Co.
J.P. Morgan
Lehman Brothers
Merrill Lynch
Morgan Stanley Dean Witter
PaineWebber
Salomon Smith Barney
UBS Warburg

Additional participants are expected as the group expands its membership in coming months.

"Our challenge is to determine how best to facilitate consolidation and delivery of the reams of information that asset managers are receiving from their brokers daily," said David Seibert of T. Rowe Price, co-chair of the organization's steering committee. "The Internet has provided a great distribution channel for investment research, but it also has created fragmentation, since firms that publish research have developed their own proprietary solutions. An industry-wide standard is required to facilitate the smooth distribution and exchange of information, no matter what distribution channel a client may use."

"By providing a common language for the distribution of any type of research, be it text or multimedia, RIXML will provide a way for brokers and asset managers to exchange the right information between the right people at the right time," says steering committee co-chair Joseph Sommer of Credit Suisse First Boston/DLJ. "At the same time, research recipients will be able to create new types of highly personalized reports from multiple information sources, increasing both the value and utility of broker investment research."

An initial draft specification for equity research is expected to be released for comment by the steering committee within the next four months. Subsequent to this initial release, the draft will be freely available and open for comment from all interested parties, including vendors. At this time, the group will additionally consider standards for other asset classes of investment research, such as fixed income securities.

For more information about the organization, and a full list of member participants, please visit the website at www.rixml.org.

Prepared by Robin Cover for The XML Cover Pages archive.

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