Australia’s world-leading position in tracking and interpreting big data to create fairer, better-quality markets to be amplified
Capital Markets CRC and SIRCA’s innovation in data analysis, technologies, products and solutions, including the Thomson Reuters Tick History product, the SMARTS Trade Surveillance system and Lorica Health’s claims analytics, is already transforming capital markets, health markets, energy markets and property markets
Merger further amplifies impact of revolutionary Industrial PhD program and of participating Australian Universities
14th June 2018: Two Australian research centres already responsible for some of the biggest innovations in making stock exchanges, health markets and energy markets fairer, more efficient and less able to be manipulated are to merge, creating a global translational research powerhouse based in Sydney.
From the revolutionary Tick History solution created and run for Thomson Reuters, which transformed the transparency of trading and market surveillance, and the SMARTS Trade Surveillance system, which was sold to Nasdaq in 2010, through to Lorica Health’s claims analytics platform and the MQDashboard, Capital Markets CRC (https://cmcrc.info/) and SIRCA (https://www.sirca.org.au/) already have successfully launched multiple world-leading innovations.
In addition to advanced analytics and creating new technologies, both organisations provide world-leading translational research and training opportunities for PhD students, teams and university partners; actionable insights and solutions for industrial partners; and impressive proof of the success of the Federal Government’s CRC program.
Federal Minister, the Hon. Craig Laundy announced the planned merger of CMCRC and SIRCA, highlighting the significant benefits of the combined ability to create new big data analytic technologies and solutions to better manage the growing volume and complexity of market data.
“It’s not just vertical integration, it’s horizontal integration at the same time, which will provide some real grunt, especially when it comes to data and data analytics, training PhD students, and collaboration with industry,” Minister Laundy said.
“What this merger will deliver to this country moving forward, not just for the PhD students moving up and out into the world, and the benefits that we’ll have as a country moving forward, is limited only by your imagination. You’re the sort of people we in government wish we could find more of to back.”
The new not-for-profit global hub to be based in Sydney will:
- significantly increase the scale and capacity to :
• deliver world-leading translational research and industry engagement, resulting in solutions, products and new companies that will enhance the fairness and efficiency of global markets (or “Market Quality”)
• develop and provide relevant global data and advanced tools to promote and enable financial research and innovation, particularly by member universities.
• expand the world’s largest cross-disciplinary industrial PhD program producing future R&D leaders in data science, finance, market quality and market design
• bring together and leverage a community of around 70 industry partners, 50 universities, over 250 experts and 12 companies in our corporate family;
• provide expert teams who will deliver value to industry by solving their problems and generating impact and outcomes for our university partners and students.
The new entity combines a track record of demonstrable success in translational research and bringing innovation to capital and securities markets, health markets, energy markets, facilities management, digital assets, supply chain logistics and financial research.
CMCRC Chair Dr David Skellern said the merger strengthens Australia’s leadership position in translational research into how data can be leveraged to improve markets.
“This merger consolidates two of the leading translational research organisations in the area of market structures and regulation, data intelligence (mining, analytics, visualisation and utilisation), technology development and innovation to solve many of the biggest problems facing government, business and consumers,” Dr Skellern said.
“The Federal Government’s National Science and Innovation Agency has set out the challenge Australia faces in moving from the bottom rung of nations in university-to-industry collaboration. CMCRC has been a shining light in the movement to change that status quo and this merger means increased scale and capability to make a far greater impact.”
SIRCA Chair Andrew Macpherson said that SIRCA had been extremely successful in serving the needs of a large number of universities over the past 21 years and in providing some of the largest and most innovative data services to global corporate clients, such as the Thomson Reuters Tick History Product.
“By joining forces with CMCRC, SIRCA achieves not only a continuation of delivery of the SIRCA mission but a significant expansion of its scale and capability to bring new benefits to members, and the wider university and industry sectors we serve,” Mr Macpherson said.
“Both CMCRC and SIRCA have the same mission – to enhance the research outputs of the Australian economy by developing, delivering and enhancing the industrial research collaborations, research infrastructure and capabilities and connectedness of universities, industry and government, making markets better and unlocking value in data.
“Both CMCRC and SIRCA have proven track records in building global solutions leveraging data, analytics and technology. As a single entity, our ability to continue our expansion into markets like health, energy and property is exponentially increased. By creating market efficiencies across these markets at a global level, we will increase the value for end users and identify ways that providers can optimise their cost base.”
The CMCRC will continue to deliver on all of its obligations to the Commonwealth and participants under the Cooperative Research Centres Program, and SIRCA will continue to provide access to global data and tools to its member base.
The combined organisation’s headquarters will be co-located with a new data research and technology community across three floors in Sydney, with branches in China and Europe supporting a global network of over 70 industry partners across five continents.
The merger is subject to finalisation of due diligence verification and legal approvals, which the Boards expect to complete quickly.
Media Contact: LJ Loch 0488 038 555 or via ljloch@alphaconsulting.global
About SIRCA
SIRCA (https://www.sirca.org.au/about-sirca/) was founded in 1997 by a group of collaborating Australian and New Zealand universities as a not for profit company to support the needs of academic researchers, in a world where data volumes were accelerating dramatically. RoZetta Technology is the commercial arm of SIRCA and is a world leader in a number of areas of technology related to financial services including understanding financial instrument data structures, managing the ingestion of significant financial market-data streams and managing large-scale archival financial market data sets.
About CMCRC
CMCRC was established in 2001 and has grown to become a leading international translational research institute with over 60 industry partners in 5 continents and operating a globally leading industrial PhD program currently developing over 100 future R&D leaders. CMCRC is supported by the Department of Industry and Science’s Cooperative Research Centre Program (www.business.gov.au).
CMCRC is sustained and refreshed by developing, funding and growing a number of high-profile successes including Thomson Reuters Tick History; SMARTS Stock Market Surveillance acquired by NASDAQ in 2010; Lorica Health (advanced claims analytics solutions and services for the healthcare sector (www.loricahealth.com) ). Other portfolio companies include: Ordermentum (www.ordermentum.com), CIM Environmental (www.cimenviro.com), Digicash
(www.digicash.com), Infinigold (http://www.infinigold.com/), Dealmax (www.dealmax.com.au) and Market Quality Dashboard (www.mqdashboard.com)
For over 20 years, 
And as a newly appointed Amazon Web Services Advanced Consulting Partner, RoZetta is able to offer even more benefits to partners and customers.
“Thanks to our AWS-enabled cloud-based solutions, our customers don’t have to worry about maintaining expensive infrastructure,” said Peter Spicer, Chief Technology Officer at RoZetta. “We can not only efficiently manage massive amounts of data, but we also extract value from it – providing outstanding commercial outcomes for our partners.”
