Brad Bailey, a research director in consultancy Celent’s capital markets group, who recently wrote a report on the future of fixed-income technology, says it’s this drive to build out its data assets that led to these acquisitions by ICE, and says others in the industry have been following suit.

“Fixed-income data is extremely valuable because it’s very hard to come by,” he says. “It is a complicated market that is changing rapidly, and the data is such a key part of it—the data insight, knowing where something actually traded, and collecting that data. Maybe exchanges haven’t always looked at it like this, but they’re in the data business, and ICE has made big, big bets in fixed income to make sure they have that data.”