TheMarkets.com Launches Broker Meeting Management Platform for the Buy-Side

NEW YORK, June 9  /PRNewswire/ -- TheMarkets.com, a leading provider of research, estimates and workflow solutions to the buy-side, today announced the launch of a meeting management system that enables buy-side professionals to manage and track the meetings they set up through their brokers.  The system is available as an add-on to the Company's broker voting platform, MeritMark, or as an independent workflow tool.

The meeting manager streamlines the process of handling meeting calendars, while enabling users to track their feedback on broker meetings over time.  It offers a single view both of what the brokers have offered, as well as which meetings have been attended.  Key features of the system include:

  -- Historical and forward-looking calendar of broker event data
  -- Meeting data populated by direct feeds from the sell-side, taking the
     onus off the buy-side to manage this data and automating the
     calendaring process
  -- Function to manually add additional meetings or upload them from Excel
  -- Ability to integrate meeting details into calendar in Microsoft Outlook
     or Lotus Notes
  -- Historical repository of meetings-both invited and attended-for client
     reference and compliance
  -- Rating functionality, enabling the buy-side to determine the value of
     meetings provided by their brokers and to track this information over
     time
  -- Integration with MeritMark; meeting ratings flow into the broker vote
     automatically




"We added the meeting management capability in response to client feedback showing that this tool would provide significant time-savings in the buy-side workflow," said Bryan Lewis, General Manager of MeritMark.  In a recent survey of the buy-side conducted by TheMarkets.com, nearly 90% of 400 respondents from over 200 institutions indicated that this would be a valuable innovation. "For individual users, the meeting manager streamlines the time spent managing their calendars.  At the same time, buy-side firms are able to assess the overall value their brokers provide," said Lewis.

About MeritMark and TheMarkets.com

MeritMark is the broker vote standard developed by institutional investors, leading investment banks, and TheMarkets.com. TheMarkets.com is a leading provider of research and estimates services to over 2000 institutional investment management firms worldwide. TheMarkets.com is owned by: Banc of America Securities, LLC (NYSE:BAC), Citi (NYSE:C), Credit Suisse (NYSE:CS), Deutsche Bank (NYSE:DB), Dresdner Kleinwort, part of Dresdner Bank AG and a member of the Allianz Group (NYSE:AZ), The Goldman Sachs Group (NYSE:GS), JPMorgan Chase (NYSE:JPM), Lehman Brothers (NYSE:LEH), Merrill Lynch (NYSE: MER), Morgan Stanley (NYSE:MS), UBS Investment Bank (NYSE:UBS), and Reuters (NASDAQ:RTRSYNASDAQ:LSE:NASDAQ:RTR). In addition to the founding investment banks of TheMarkets.com, MeritMark is also sponsored by Bear Stearns (NYSE:BSC).  For more information, visit http://www.themarkets.com/ or http://www.meritmark.com/.

   Press Contact:
   Jasmine Swann
   TheMarkets.com
   +1.212.812.4631
   

DATASOURCE: TheMarkets.com



CONTACT:  Jasmine Swann of TheMarkets.com, [phone],





Web site:  http://www.themarkets.com/

http://www.meritmark.com/ 

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