Inside Reference Data Awards 2012 WINNERS special report

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The Data Party

It was all about data at the annual awards ceremony in New York on 22 May. We even found a stand-up comedian to present the awards, Greg Schwem, who appeared tailor-made for our event-he runs a company called "Comedy with a Byte". The entertainer, dubbed "America's favorite corporate funnyman" by Chicago Magazine, was joined by the cream of the data industry-the market and reference data innovators and achievers.

This year marked the 10th anniversary of the Inside Market Data awards, which recognize excellence in the financial information industry. The first awards began in 2003 with just 12 categories. Since then, Inside Reference Data joined the roster, and new categories have been added to reflect achievements in a broader and more granular range of business areas. The first group of awards includes the vendor categories for best provider in specific areas of market and reference data, the results of which were determined by an online survey of end-users. The second group of awards is a series of call-for-entry categories that were judged by a panel of industry experts and the editors.

On the awards night, we also presented the 27th entrant to the Inside Market Data Hall of Fame. To celebrate IMD's 25 anniversary in 2010, we set up the Hall of Fame with 25 inaugural inductees-one for every year we've been publishing. When we sent out the questionnaire for this year's awards, we invited participants to nominate their market data hero. One name stood out because the nominations came from the people who really count-the customers. David Gershon was named this year's Hall of Fame inductee, praised for founding options pricing software vendor SuperDerivatives-of which he remains CEO-which brought fresh clarity and transparency to illiquid and opaque OTC derivatives pricing.

We offer our congratulations to all the winners and finalists, and look forward to the next year of innovation.

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