Bloomberg Terminal vs. Factiva

Depending on which area of the finance sector you may work in, the Bloomberg Terminal will have plenty of helpful functionality for you. Two specific scenarios for myself in the Structured Finance area are tracking the pricing benchmark and following outstanding deals in the market. You can follow progress of the deals, how well they are advancing, and final pricing details

Incentivized

A large part of our work depends on the ability to source quality media content from a breadth of dependable sources globally. This is Factiva's bread and butter: it has a very comprehensive list of 'quality' media sources such as nationals, dailies, business journals and magazines from around the world that are easily mined for the content they hold. If you're thinking about anything other than these 'traditional' media sources then Factiva probably isn't your thing. It doesn't do social media.

Incentivized

• Communicating with investors, banks, partners, etc
• Tracking key market metrics
• Monitoring existing and previous structured finance deals

Incentivized

• Factiva offers excellent search builders so that I am able to narrow my search to specific companies or topics very easily.
• Factiva combines a large number of credible sources into one place and allows me to search all of these sources.
• Factiva's use of timestamps helps me understand when the news was known by the market which allows me to analyze how (if at all) that particular piece of news impacted the company's stock price.
• Provides an excellent starting place for learning about a company and/or industry.

Incentivized

• Visual user interface
• A lot of functionality, need tutorials and lessons to narrow down
• Expensive!
• Some information may be delayed

Incentivized

• The UX leaves room to be desired
• There are often repetitive entries
• The functionality can be confusing

Incentivized

While there are a lot of competitive services in the marketplace, each good in its own right, the Bloomberg Terminal is considered the top product. It has key fast information and can help individuals make fast decisions. It also has a top-tier support desk that can answer questions for you and teach you functionality to apply to your role

Incentivized

At the time, Factiva was already being used by the company I worked for - they had developed procedures specifically for using Factiva, so there wasn't really an option. I've used Lexis, Westlaw and Bloomberg exclusively for legal research, so there wasn't really an overlap with Factiva.

Incentivized

• Appropriate pricing of deals due to market comparisons
• Instant communication with key stakeholders
• Top and quick newsbreaks

Incentivized