Tabb Group, the 17-year old capital markets research and consulting firm, has shut down its business effective immediately. The official announcement cited the impact of Covid-19 for the closure.
“Dramatic and profound changes in the research business have challenged the firm for the past several years. Now exacerbated by the Coronavirus, this public health condition has eliminated Tabb’s ability to produce industry events and conferences—a major source of its revenue. These forces have made it impossible for TABB Group to deliver its high-quality research and services to its valued clients while compensating its staff appropriately. The company has amassed tremendous data, analytics and a vibrant professional community on TabbFORUM, and will now look to sell its assets”, the statement said.
Larry Tabb, the founder of TABB Group, said on Twitter the company’s board “just pulled the plug”. “We will be shutting down as of today and putting assets up for sale. I want to thank everyone that has supported the company, our folks, and me personally over the past 17 years.”
The firm was badly hit by the isolation measures enforced by companies and government authorities to contain the spread of the Coronavirus pandemic.
Larry Tabb’s LinkedIn profile indicates that he has already started working as an independent analyst/consultant “focusing on financial markets, fintech, and capital/financial markets issues”. This dramatic decision comes after 17 years running the TABB Group business, where he published industry research analyzing both US and European market structure; central clearing, credit default swaps, fixed income, equity and foreign exchange trading; financial markets trading and processing systems; analytical trading tools; financial markets infrastructure, including grid and cloud computing; and foreign and emerging market technologies.
The firm’s most recent research said the sell-side was in a tight race for the equity algo business. The claim of a “survival of the fittest” mode argued that the sell-side’s artificial intelligence (AI) equity algorithm ecosystem has expanded after years of development work to a point where significant AI-attributable excess returns have finally begun to be realized in the past two years. Automated performance measurement applications like algo wheels are driving broker selection decisions, competition to build better, faster, smarter algorithms has become a war of attrition. 41% of sell-side firms interviewed launched their client-based AI algos only last year.
