ThomsonReuters_JA__FY15_redacted.pdf

UNITED STATES

SECURITIES AND EXCHANGE COMMISSION

100 F STREET, NE

WASHINGTON, DC 20549

OFFICE OF

Office of Acquisitions

JUSTIFICATION AND APPROVAL

SIMPLIFIED PROCEDURES FOR CERTAIN COMMERCIAL ITEMS

RQ 31000-15-0236

J&A Log: 2015-0198

Upon the basis of the following justification as required by Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) 13.501(a), I hereby approve the issuance of the contractual action discussed below using other than full and open competition, pursuant to the authority cited herein.

1. Contracting Activity.

U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission 100 F Street, NE Washington, DC 20549

2. Nature and Description of Action Being Approved:

The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) intends to award a sole source requirement for a business and financial information service that provides access to real-time data, proprietary content, and third-party information combined with powerful application tools and communications to Thomson Reuters (Markets) LLC, 22 Thomson Place, Boston, MA 02210. This is a renewal contract action.

3. Description of the supplies or services required to meet the needs of the SEC and the estimated value:

The requirement is for the following services:

• I/B/E/S Estimates Data with monthly updates files via Wharton

Research Data Services (WRDS),U.S. Earnings Consensus Surprise Data with monthly updates (comparison of expected consensus operating earnings and actual operating earnings),and IBES Consensus Data for use with Standard & Poor’s Compustat service (forward-looking consensus earnings estimates).

• Insider Filing Data with historical and current insider transactions and holdings data via WRDS. The data include transactions and holdings information filed on Form 3, Form 4, Form 5, Form 144, and supplemented by data from proxy statements. The forms mentioned above identify the holdings of registrants’ securities owned by directors, officers and 10% shareholders.

• Mutual Funds and 13F Institutions databases via WRDS, providing access to data on common stock holdings by mutual funds and investment companies in order to analyze investment performance, investment decisions, trading patterns, and the returns generated by the holdings of the funds. The security coverage includes all domestic and Canadian common stocks, holdings and transactions for individual mutual funds and investment companies starting in the first quarter of 1980 and continuing to the present. The holdings data shall be identical to the information in the source forms, unadjusted for capitalization changes or mergers.

• DealScan Database providing historical information on the terms and conditions of deals in the global commercial loan market. It provides access to loans’ terms and conditions, high yield bonds, private placements, and hybrid financing structures originated globally from 1988 through the present.

Information includes borrower, lender, purpose, amount, fees, covenants, financials and more.

• SDC Platinum databases (Global New Issues including private and public issuances of equity and debt in international markets; Global Mergers & Acquisitions of all public and private corporate transactions involving at least 3% of the ownership of the company; Global All Municipals covers all negotiated, competitively bid and privately placed U.S.

municipal new issues from 1966 to present and all sub-sovereign public finance new issues offered worldwide from 1963 to present).

• Thomson One Analytics (web based access to real-time global equity and fixed income full-text research reports on more than 34,000 companies produced by over 700 worldwide brokerage firms. The service shall include:

-First Call Notes and Research with real-time fixed income and equity investment research reports and market commentary;

-Analyst Estimates with database of analyst estimates, both detailed and mean/median, featuring up to 20 forecast measures for more than 20,000 companies;

-StreetEvents Calendar with events from over 18,000 public companies and 100 sell-side firms in over 90 countries;

-Reuters Fundamentals and Worldscope Company Data with standardized annual and interim financial statement data and financial rations covering 37,000 active companies and 27,000 inactive companies worldwide going back to 1980;

-Reuters News-covering financial and economic news worldwide;

-I/B/E/S-global aggregated forecast data by country, sector, industry and index;

-Datastream Economics-historical macro-economic and monetary charts covering the last two years; and, -SEC Filings from Disclosure, ownership data on funds, firms and insider holdings, and officers and Directors information.

• Datastream Premium User CTD 3 Net & Datastream Worldscope CTD 3(historical financial statistical database following global financial and economic information:

-Global Equities with up to 50 years of historical financial data on over 85,000 active and 80,000 inactive equities across more than 150 developed and emerging markets;

-Indices including more than 210,000 series from sources such as MSCI, FTSE, and S&P; bond indices such as JP Morgan, Iboxx and Citigroup; governmental bond indices, and Datastream proprietary indices;

-Bonds-including historical price and volume data for 230,000 active and 500,000 matured and called bonds, warrants, convertibles, CDS, domestic and international issues;

-I/B/E/S Current Consensus including the most recent 18 months of analysts’ consensus earnings estimates;

-Economic Indicators including sources as the International Monetary Fund, Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, Eurostat, and Consensus Economics;

-Global Foreign Exchange Rates-more than 20,000 daily rates dating back to 1965 from sources including WM/Reuters, tenfore, GTIS, Tullet Prebon, and ECB;

-Commodities & Energy-including prices and indices including over $32,000 series from sources including Platts, ICIS and Metal Bulletin;

-Unit and Investment Trusts-including pricing and dividend coverage of 120,000 funds; and, -Worldscope Fundamentals-standardized annual and interim financial statements data and financial ratios covering 37,000 active companies and 27,000 inactive company’s world wide going back to 1980.

• ThomsonOne.com (web-based financial tool with the capability to sort, search, and analyze financial data with access to ThomsonOne Foundation, IB Estimates & StreetEvents, IB Ownership; IB Research, IB Private Equity, IB Deals Module, IB Financials Module, Deal Analytics Module.)

• Lipper Hedge Fund Database with access to detailed quantitative and qualitative information on active and inactive hedge funds. The database includes data elements for each fund, including historical price and performance data; fund manager profile and contact information; fund structure, fees and expenses, leverage, and strategy;

inception date; fund domicile; strategy classification details; and investment methodology and focus descriptions.

The estimated contract value is $ for one year, which will use FY15 funds.

4. Statutory Authority for Other Than Full and Open Competition:

The statutory authority permitting other than full and open competition is the Simplified Procedures for Certain Commercial Items, FAR Subpart 13.5 in accordance with FAR 41 U.S.C 1901.

5. Demonstration that the proposed contractor's unique qualifications or nature of the acquisition requires use of the authority cited:

The SEC requires that the following data be deliverable through the Wharton Research Data Services (WRDS) platform: I/B/E/S data files, Insider Filing Feed US, Mutual Funds Ownership Current and History, 13F Ownership Current and History, and DealScan.

The WRDS platform enables Commission staff to conduct studies more efficiently, since the data can be accessed through the statistical platform currently used for analysis. WRDS is a user-friendly, web-based, data management system designed to retrieve information from a wide variety of financial and economic data sources, and to facilitate large-scale data research. In addition to being available via WRDS, the Mutual Funds Ownership Current and History and 13F Ownership Current and History holdings data meet the requirement of identical to the information in the source forms, unadjusted for capitalization changes or mergers. DealScan meets the data requirements, providing key data for all syndicated loans in the market, available for Commission-wide access and large scale cross-sectional analyses. In addition, DealScan’s search capabilities will allow investigation teams to isolate recent loans and loan amendments that may have led to illegal insider trading. Insider Filing Data is the only comprehensive source of historical insider trading transactions that is deliverable through the Wharton Research Data Services (WRDS) platform.

I/B/E/S is the only service that provides earnings estimates, expected and actual operating earnings, current consensus earnings forecasts, and historical consensus earnings estimates via WRDS platform. In addition, I/B/E/S has the most comprehensive coverage of forecast contributors and countries worldwide, and provides a unique identifier that enables users to trace a company’s historical estimates even though other identifiers, such as CUSIP numbers, may have changed.

SDC Platinum databases are required because the product has the broadest coverage of securities, with the most extensive historical range. In addition, it enables the download of large datasets that are necessary for research and analysis of capital markets, mergers and acquisitions, syndicated loans, and private equity.

Thomson ONE Analytics is the only source that aggregates estimates, analyst reports, and an extensive historical backfile of company information.

Datastream is proprietary analytical software that is customizable and enables the simultaneous use of Thomson databases of company fundamentals and both adjusted and unadjusted equity price histories and eight historical and financial statistical data bases follows global financial and economic information. It also has the most in-depth economic coverage along with the longest historical range of any financial product.

ThomsonOne.com web based financial tool is required because it provides access to analyst reports that are distributed exclusively through Thomson Reuters, and SEC staff require access to a broad array of analyst reports. It also has the most complete collection of historical SEC filings of any service.

Lipper Hedge Fund Database is one of several sources of information on hedge funds that are available for use in the SEC's OIDS research platform. These databases contain information that hedge funds voluntarily report. While these sources may overlap in their coverage of funds, each contains unique funds not reported elsewhere. The aggregation of Lipper Hedge Fund data with additional content through OIDS fulfills the requirement for comprehensive coverage and analytical tools needed to perform on-going hedge fund industry surveillance.

SEC staff must have access to the most prominent industry analytical tools to keep up to date with the information, data, and analysis used by the industry it regulates. Thomson Reuters services are necessary for that effort because they provide the most extensive historical files, comprehensive data coverage, proprietary news, and industry analysis that enables SEC staff to write and interpret rules, check for compliance, manage risk assessment, conduct surveillance, and take enforcement action.

Without this comprehensive collection of resources, the SEC would not have complete information to support these activities.

6. Efforts to Ensure that offers are solicited from as Many Potential Sources as Possible.

A notice was published on September 3, 2015 to the Government Point of Entry (GPE) and no responses were received. Based on the extensive market research conducted (see resulting conclusions in paragraph 5) and the lack of responses to our notice, the only possible potential source is Thomson Reuters (Markets), LLC.

7. Determination by the Contracting Officer that the anticipated cost to the Government will be fair and reasonable.

The Contracting Officer has determined that the anticipated cost to the Government will be fair and reasonable.

8. Description of a market survey conducted and results or statement of the reasons a market survey was not conducted:

Knowledgeable individuals in Division of Economics, Risk, and Analysis and business librarians were consulted, and research was conducted on the Internet. Additionally, a notice was posted on GPE from September 3, 2015 – September 18, 2015 and no responses were received. Based on this research and the recommendation of those consulted, we concluded that the contractor possesses unique capabilities unavailable elsewhere in the market.

9. Other Supporting Facts:

The financial data industry does not actively monitor the GPE nor are they registered in SAM.gov. In order to further facilitate competition, the SEC should consider advertising in trade journals and other financial industry forums with sufficient lead time.

10. A listing of the sources, if any that expressed, in writing an interest in the acquisition:

No responses were received from the notice transmitted on GPE.

11. A statement of the actions, if any, the agency may take to remove or overcome any barriers to competition before any subsequent acquisition for the supplies or services required:

The Commission’s information requirements are ongoing and future acquisitions of similar services will be advertised.

Technical & Requirements Certifications I certify that the facts and representations under my cognizance, which are included in this justification, are complete and accurate.

Name/Title Signature Date

Contracting Officer Certification I certify that this justification is accurate and complete to the best of my knowledge and belief.

General Counsel Review Based upon the facts and rationale presented herein, this justification appears legally sufficient.

Competition Advocate Approval