Amazing career. Built fds entire analytics business. Quite a legacy.
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Agree that plc was worst decision ever. It started when Hadley left. Portware got it started. PS was told it was an OMS even though it was an EMS. PS bought into CE BS and the rest is history.
The biggest issue is that FDS spent tons of money making PLC acquisitions, retaining their needy legacy clients, and failing to integrate the products into a single compelling platform. PA and Derivative Solutions ended up being a success after they finally bit the bullet and decided to move to a fully hosted solution and cut any legacy clients that weren't onboard. RR was instrumental in this decision. Unfortunately, once he became head of Analytics, PLC was already on the road to becoming a disaster.
Once it was obvious PLC strategy wasn't going to be a success, digital transformation became the market talking point which mostly resulted in increased cloud spend. Now AI is all the rage and while FDS leadership has really talked it up, internally they slashed AI budgets as spend wasn't justifying return. Now they are cutting costs again with a global headcount reduction. 8+ years of margin expansion talk in a variety of market conditions, slowing rev growth, and ever increasing share buyback program. I had high hopes that Robie would be able to turn the ship around but no cohesive vision emerged. Just crude bundling via web wrappers in the workstation and cherry picking small pieces to integrate natively.
Its almost as if they are starting the ground work to restructure as a lean data provider and abandoning the higher level workstation centric workflows. Still remember all the 3 year plans that would just get silently abandoned after a year or two.
You make your own luck … PAH made pragmatic decisions and didn’t move fds into crazy areas they didn’t know. He actually knew the business and clients. His successor was a disaster who just was led around by a McKenzie consultant board member who basically ran the company. 10 years of incompetence finally catching up.
While he (PAH) was the right guy for the job at the time, some of the set's success then was just a function that it was in the right place at the right time. The world has moved on and the set is no longer well shaped for the modern world. Sad but true. I certainly miss that era, but we all have to move on. You can't go home again.
@OP wow I’m shocked anyone is still left- I’m sure he got a nice package. Truly anyone from 20 years ago is gone. It wil never be like it was with Phil and I mean the original Hadley! Good luck to anyone left. Save money and have a back up plan.
RR lived and breathed FactSet. He was exceptionally smart, dedicated, and deeply invested in the company's success. His leadership style was heavily focused on his own segment, which drove results but sometimes led to organizational silos and overlapping product efforts. Certain areas, such as Fixed Income, remained less integrated into the broader product strategy. He was also fiercely loyal to his teams, a quality that built strong relationships but occasionally created challenges around accountability and performance management.
He was let go, not "retired"....or is that what it's masked as these days?
FDS now is a different company, interesting to see where will go from here.
Assume new management...
All the best to RR in his new gig.
No - CEO of another company
Is that what his external opportunity is? Retirement?
@ej I would guess Gavin Rush, old (first?) CTO.
Who is Rush?
Rush and Ellis built the business, RR took what they built and extended it. So get the facts straight. As for legacy, that is in eye of beholder
Mixed results - he was good/ok with Analytics along with middle office. Horrible front office strategy along with lack of understanding of most products outside of PA.
Liberation day part 2!!!