Softbank Gets Off Cheaply
from the They-know-how-to-pick-'em dept
In today's WSJ, Softbank bought 20% of Chicago-based Morningstar, the biggest mutual fund tracking company, for $91M. Morningstar has languished for years now, failing to move their paper- and subscription-based services to the web and failing to get many distribution deals. Now their competitors give a ton of data away, so who exactly is Morningstar and why should I pay for the data? Well, Softbank will likely integrate Morningstar into E*trade. Given the size of the mutual fund investor community (large but shrinking recently), there is huge upside for a trading company to court the "fundies". Free data from Morningstar might just make this buy-and-hold, passive-index-fund investor switch to E*Trade. $91M gooses both companies, so I'd say it was a bargain for Softbank.Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
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