The LSE Directory / Charting platforms
FactSet Research Systems Inc. is a financial data and software company headquartered in Norwalk, Connecticut, that sells the FactSet Workstation, a desktop, web, and mobile platform combining market data, company and portfolio analytics, screening, charting, and risk tools with real-time quotes and news for investment professionals. Beyond the terminal, it distributes the same underlying data programmatically through REST APIs, SDKs, a Kafka-based real-time streaming feed, and bulk data feeds, and runs the Open:FactSet Marketplace for third-party and alternative datasets. FactSet targets buy-side and sell-side institutions rather than retail users: portfolio managers, equity and fixed-income analysts, risk managers, and investment bankers. Its differentiation versus terminal rivals is workflow integration across the front, middle, and back office; recent product moves extend this into order management and execution (the 2025 acquisition of LiquidityBook added a cloud-native OMS and a proprietary FIX network reaching over 200 brokers and 1,600 destinations across 80 markets) and into generative AI, with FactSet Mercury, an AI-powered knowledge agent embedded in the Workstation, and Pitch Creator, an AI tool for investment-banking pitch materials. The company was founded in 1978 by Howard Wille and Chuck Snyder, went public in 1996, and trades on the NYSE under ticker FDS; it joined the S&P 500 in December 2021. As of its fiscal year ended August 2025, FactSet reported revenue of $2.32 billion and net income of $597 million, with roughly 12,800 employees across more than 60 offices; as of May 31, 2026 it served more than 9,100 clients comprising over 247,000 investment professionals worldwide. Its largest acquisition to date is CUSIP Global Services, bought from S&P Global for $1.925 billion in a deal announced December 2021 and completed March 2022; earlier deals include StreetAccount (2012), BISAM (2017), and Truvalue Labs (2020). Sanoke Viswanathan, a former JPMorgan Chase executive, became CEO effective September 8, 2025, succeeding longtime CEO Phil Snow. The leadership change followed a board-announced succession plan, and the company's recent acquisitions (LiquidityBook in front-office trading, CUSIP in reference data) plus its AI product push reflect a strategy of deepening integration across the investment workflow rather than competing purely on data breadth.
