The following discussion should be read in conjunction with our condensed consolidated financial statements for the period ended September 30, 2009 included herein in Item 1, and for the year ended December 31, 2008, included in our Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2008.

Amounts in the tables, including footnotes to the tables, are shown in thousands, except per share data.

Overview

We are a leading global provider of financial market data, analytics and related solutions to financial institutions, active traders and individual investors. Our customers use our offerings to support their portfolio management and valuation, research and analysis, trading, sales and marketing, and client service activities. We market and license our services either by direct subscriptions or through third-party business alliances.

Our offerings are developed and delivered to customers through four businesses that comprise our two reportable operating segments: Institutional Services and Active Trader Services.

• Institutional Services. Our Institutional Services segment primarily targets financial institutions such as banks, brokerage firms, mutual fund companies, hedge funds, insurance companies and money management firms. In addition, our Institutional Services segment markets its offerings to financial information providers, information media companies, third-party redistributors and outsourcing organizations such as service bureaus and custodian banks. The Institutional Services segment is composed of three businesses:

• Interactive Data Pricing and Reference Data. Our Pricing and Reference Data business provides financial institutions, third-party redistributors and outsourcing organizations with intraday, end-of-day and historical pricing, evaluations and reference data for an extensive range of securities, commodities, and derivative instruments that are traded around the world.

• Interactive Data Real-Time Services. Our Real-Time Services business provides financial institutions, financial information providers and information media companies with global real-time and delayed financial market information covering equities, derivative instruments, futures, fixed income securities and foreign exchange. Our Real-Time Services business also includes our Interactive Data Managed Solutions business, which offers customized web-based financial market information solutions.

• Interactive Data Fixed Income Analytics. Our Fixed Income Analytics business provides financial institutions with sophisticated fixed income analytics designed to help manage risks and measure the performance of diversified portfolios.

Active Trader Services

Our Active Trader Services segment targets active traders, individual investors and investment community professionals. We consider active traders to be investors who typically make their own investment decisions, trade frequently through online brokerage accounts and seek to earn a substantial portion of their income from trading. The Active Trader Services segment is composed of the following business:

• eSignal. Our eSignal business provides active traders, individual investors and investment community professionals with real-time financial market information and access to decision-support tools through a wide range of desktop solutions to assist in their analysis of securities traded on all major markets worldwide. eSignal also operates financial websites that provide investors with free financial information and news about global equities, options, futures and other securities.

Corporate and Unallocated

Our Corporate and Unallocated costs include expenses related to corporate, general and administrative activities in the US and the UK, stock-based compensation, costs associated with our Boxborough data center, and intangible asset amortization.

Business Strategy

We are focused on expanding our position as a leading provider of financial market data, analytics and related solutions. A key element of our strategy involves working closely with our largest direct institutional customers and redistributors to better understand and address their current and future financial market data needs. By better understanding customer needs, we believe we can develop enhancements to existing services and introduce new services that offer new or improved features, content or capabilities that will appeal to current and prospective customers. As part of our efforts to build strong customer relationships, we continue to dedicate significant resources to providing high-quality, responsive customer support and service. We believe that our combination of strong account management and responsive customer support has contributed to our high customer retention rates within our Institutional Services segment, as well as enhanced our ability to attract new customers.

We continue to centralize key areas of our organization from a business and product strategy, sales management and operational perspective. We have made substantial progress in this area over the past several years, which we believe enables us to present our business more effectively to the marketplace. We plan to continue our efforts in this area going forward. In addition, we believe these actions continue to help us address our institutional customers' needs by leveraging our collective content, capabilities and other resources across six core product areas: evaluations, reference data, real-time market data services, web-based solutions (referred to historically as managed solutions), fixed income analytics and desktop solutions.

We plan to continue to invest in organic growth initiatives and to pursue strategic acquisitions that will enable us to expand our business globally. More specifically, we will continue to focus on developing and delivering high-value services through new and enhanced offerings. These efforts are based, in part, on an active dialogue with customers, prospects, business partners, industry organizations and other key parties. Our development initiatives are oriented toward helping our customers address powerful trends affecting their businesses such as heightened scrutiny on their valuation processes, increased regulation, increased sensitivity about investment and market risks (as well as increased focus on risk management in general), use of automated trading systems and the need to differentiate their wealth management platforms. More specifically, we will seek to enhance our fixed income capabilities by providing a broader range of valuation and analytics offerings for use throughout the enterprise. We also plan to leverage our reference data content by developing new capabilities and services that enable us to extend our reach further into the middle and front office workflows. Another key element in our growth strategy will be to maximize the content, capabilities and offerings across our real-time market data, web-based solutions and eSignal desktop product areas to drive greater success within the wealth management and electronic trading areas of our institutional clients.

International expansion also continues to be a key element in our growth strategy. We plan to continue investing in growing our business outside of North America, both organically and through acquisitions. We believe that continental Europe represents an attractive opportunity for expansion and can complement the strong relationships we have maintained with customers based in the United Kingdom. We believe that our August 2008 acquisition of Kler's, which is based in Rome, Italy, and our December 2008 acquisition of a majority interest in NDF, which is based in Tokyo, Japan, will continue to enhance our ability to further expand our business outside of North America. In addition, in early 2009, we took steps to align leadership of our business outside of North America under a single management structure in order to more effectively and efficiently allocate our resources with a focus on gaining greater scale and accelerating our progress in the Asia Pacific region.

Optimizing our technical infrastructure represents another key element in our strategy. Our technology infrastructure and operations support both the Institutional Services and Active Trader Services segments of our business and are designed to facilitate the reliable and efficient processing and delivery of data to our customers. We have implemented, and will continue to implement, initiatives aimed at optimizing our technical infrastructure by taking advantage of existing resources residing across our global organization. By doing so, we believe we can enhance our ability to meet the data delivery needs of our customers while improving our operational efficiency.

Historically, our business has generated a high level of recurring revenue and cash flow from operations. We typically have invested our financial resources in organic growth initiatives and strategic acquisitions while maintaining a conservative capital structure. We also have used cash to repurchase our common stock and returned cash to stockholders through dividends at levels and junctures as our Board of Directors believes appropriate. For additional information pertaining to dividend activity during the nine months ended September 30, 2009, please refer to the discussion of our financing activities appearing below in this Management's Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations.

Business and Market Trends

The global financial markets have experienced extreme volatility and disruption for more than a year. This volatility reached unprecedented levels in the fall of 2008 as a result of the global financial crisis affecting the banking system and participants in the financial markets. The global financial crisis has impacted the financial health of financial market participants and has resulted in consolidation among some participants in the financial markets and the collapse of others. Operational spending by financial institutions during the second half of 2008 and into the first nine months of 2009 has been negatively impacted by the crisis as firms look to control or reduce spending. Bank collapses and emergency mergers have decreased significantly from levels in the first quarter of 2009. Government interventions around the world have helped curtail decline and the global economy has shown some signs of stabilization. The financial markets likewise appear to have begun to stabilize. However, the timing and extent of a fuller economic recovery remains uncertain. Notwithstanding recent signs of stabilization, the ramifications of the global economic crisis continue to impact our business. We continue to expect that overall spending on market data and related solutions for at least the remainder of 2009 will decline over 2008 levels for the same period.

The global financial crisis has prompted substantial government intervention in the financial services industry. As a result, it is expected that there will be new regulation and government oversight of the financial services industry. It is unclear at this time how potential new regulation and government oversight will affect our business in the future.

When financial institutions consolidate, they frequently look to gain synergies by combining their operations, including the elimination of redundant data sources. We continue to deliver market data services to a number of customers who have completed or who are currently involved in the process of a merger or acquisition. If our services are eliminated or reduced as a result of consolidation, there is generally a lag between the completion of the customer's consolidation activity and its impact on our revenue. It is unclear at this time how the affected firms plan to integrate their operations and what impact, if any, those plans will have on the demand for our services. Additional financial institution failures or additional consolidation activity has the potential to adversely impact our revenue in the future.

We have encountered challenging market conditions thus far into 2009, characterized by limited visibility and considerable levels of uncertainty about customer spending on financial market data and related solutions. We expect that these market conditions are likely to persist for the remainder of 2009 and through 2010. While we believe that recent events in the global financial markets will lead to a reduction in overall spending by institutions on financial market data and related solutions in 2009 and in 2010, the overall magnitude of the reductions is unclear to us at this time. Customers continue to focus on containing or reducing costs. The spending decisions in various parts of our customers' organizations have been and will continue to be impacted by recent and emerging industry trends. We anticipate that the outcome of the spending decision-making process will vary depending on the specific trends impacting the different parts of their organization, as well as their overall business strategy. While in some areas the impact or anticipated impact of current trends will likely lead to a decision to reduce market data and related services, in other areas the analysis of the trends may lead to a decision to acquire additional market data or related services. It is unclear at this time which segments of the financial market data industry will be most affected by the continued focus on controlling or reducing spending. We believe we are well-positioned in areas that we believe will continue to receive higher levels of investment, such as in the evaluations and reference data areas.

In the current environment, the organic growth rate of our business has slowed and in response, we have taken certain actions to control discretionary spending and reduce costs, including the reduction of travel and consulting expenses, the elimination of annual merit-based salary increases in 2009 and a significant reduction of certain annual incentive bonus compensation in 2009. It remains unclear whether the overall reduction in spending on financial market data and related solutions in 2009 will create further deterioration on our near-term and longer-term financial results. The major trends influencing our institutional business are further described below.

Institutional Services

We believe that our institutional customers' focus on reducing or controlling costs as a result of the recent difficult economic environment continues to influence cancellation activity. However, in the third quarter of 2009, we observed that the intense pressure to cut costs at our large institutional clients was lessening somewhat versus our experience during first half of the year. For example, within the Institutional Services segment, we experienced lower cancellation levels by customers, particularly for our real-time market data services, for the third quarter of 2009 compared with levels in the first half of 2009. For the first nine months of 2009, cancellation levels within the Institutional Services segment were higher than historical levels. From a geographical perspective, we experienced more favorable conditions outside of North America.

In addition to monitoring the volume and magnitude of cancellations, we also monitor retention rates. We have historically measured our retention rates by the number of institutionally oriented accounts we retain in any given 12-month period. A single institutional customer may have (and often does have) more than one account. This metric does not measure revenue associated with any retained or cancelled account. During the third quarter of 2009, our institutionally oriented retention rate was approximately 92%, compared with the 95% level that we experienced in prior years and remained essentially unchanged compared with our institutionally oriented retention rate of 92% in the second quarter of 2009.

We believe that much of the data we supply is mission critical to our customers' operations regardless of market conditions; however, we are affected, at least in part, by the recently intensified focus on cost reduction or containment within our institutional customer base. If the data we provide were not mission critical, we believe that current market conditions would affect us more adversely. In addition, as further described below, the current economic climate and global financial crisis also present certain opportunities for us that may ameliorate the adverse impact the focus on cost cutting may have on our revenue.

The following are among the major trends influencing our institutional businesses:

• There has been and continues to be an industry trend (primarily in North America) for major financial institutions to outsource their back-office operations to service bureaus and custodian banks. We have established relationships with, and are a major data supplier to, many service bureaus and custodian banks. If an existing customer elects to terminate direct services from us because of a decision to outsource its back-office operations to a service bureau or custodian bank, we often continue to supply our data indirectly through our relationships with these institutions. In such cases, the revenue we earn per customer may be less than what we would earn if the customer obtained the data from us directly, although the costs associated with delivering and supporting the data indirectly may also be less.

• Over the past decade, there has been a consolidation of financial institutions both within and across the financial services industry. As discussed above, deteriorating conditions in the financial markets led to significant consolidation activity among financial institutions in the fall of 2008. Consolidations can lead to the elimination of redundant data sources at the combined entity. Consequently, consolidation activity has the potential to adversely impact our future revenue.

• As mentioned above, we expect that the global financial crisis will continue to adversely impact spending on market data and related services in 2009 as financial institutions focus on containing or reducing their costs. This focus is, in certain instances, leading to the redirection of spending into areas where our financial market data services and related solutions can help them increase the efficiency of their workflows and related processing functions. At the same time, this focus is contributing to longer sales cycles, constraining usage rates, and resulting in increased cancellations and service downgrades. The impact of cancellations on our revenue may be delayed due to the lag between receipt of notice of cancellations and the related effective date of the termination. We have also experienced more moderate growth in usage-related revenue, which often includes end-users subscribing to our content through various redistribution channel partners such as software companies, service bureaus and custodian banks. Our revenue through these redistributors depends on several factors: the number of total end-user customers subscribing to our content; the number of securities being delivered to the customer; and the frequency by which we deliver those securities to the customer. Usage-related revenue growth has moderated as customers consolidate the number of funds they manage and conduct intensive cost-savings reviews aimed at reducing the number of securities they require information about, reducing the frequency of when they receive information from us, or both. We expect that usage-related revenue (which currently represents approximately one-quarter of our total Institutional Services segment revenue) will continue growing at a more modest rate for at least the remainder of 2009 compared with the usage-related revenue growth in recent years. Heightened attention by financial institutions on containing or reducing their spending on the market data and related solutions that we provide to them over the coming quarters as well as the impact of cancellation notices we received in any given quarter or those received over multiple quarters, has the potential to adversely impact our future revenue.

• Increased regulation within the global financial services industry continues to influence the ways in which financial institutions utilize financial market data. We believe that the use of real-time, intraday, end-of-day and historical financial market data from independent third-party providers like us will be increasingly important as firms seek to modify existing practices to effectively and efficiently address their increasing regulatory compliance obligations.

• The complexity of financial instruments has escalated in recent years. Determining the fair value of highly complex instruments requires specialized expertise, and the firms trading these instruments seek to leverage efficiencies by working with independent third-party providers like us who can assist them in their valuation of these instruments.

• Financial institutions are creating automated algorithmic and electronic trading applications to efficiently execute their trading strategies. In order to rapidly execute their trading strategies, these applications require real-time market data with minimal latency. In addition, the trend toward algorithmic and other electronic trading programs is contributing to significant growth in market data volumes, thereby requiring both market data suppliers like us and the financial institutions themselves to increase network capacity to address these volume issues.

Interactive Data Pricing and Reference Data's growth is the result of new sales to existing customers and, to a lesser extent, sales to new customers, coupled with strong retention rates and higher usage revenue. Growth in this business is dependent, in large part, on

our ability to continue the expansion of our data content offerings in order to meet the current and evolving needs of our customers, particularly as regulatory changes occur, market and investment risk sensitivities intensify, and as financial instruments become more numerous, complex or both. For example, during the third quarter, we expanded our valuation services to encompass loans associated with the Term Asset-Backed Securities Loan Facility and Municipal Auction Rate Securities, including Student Loan Auction Rate Securities.

Elevated cancellation levels, primarily during the first two quarters of 2009, within Interactive Data Real-Time Services has challenged this business to sustain the growth it produced in prior quarters. While we have made progress in recent years to reorient our real-time market data services customer and revenue mix toward larger, more stable institutions, there is still a significant level of this business that is concentrated with infomedia websites, small money managers, proprietary trading shops, hedge funds and niche redistributors. The cancellations we experienced in this business, during the third quarter of 2009 improved over first-half 2009 levels. Cancellations in this business during the first nine months of 2009 primarily reflect the impact the current difficult economic environment and market conditions have had on many of these smaller customers, as those customers cease operations or take cost-cutting actions leading to cancellations. To a lesser extent, cancellations involve larger institutional customers who have ceased certain operations, reduced the scope of real-time content that they require or deployed an alternative solution involving sourcing certain content directly from a major stock exchange. This business continues to close sales to new and existing institutional customers seeking to subscribe to our low latency data services in order to support their algorithmic and electronic trading applications. This business also continues to expand its Interactive Data Managed Solutions business globally with both existing and new clients. For example, during the past three months, Interactive Data has announced new client wins for its web-based solutions with Msnbc.com and Scivantage. This business continues to invest in enhancing and expanding its offerings and technical infrastructure.

Growth in our Interactive Data Fixed Income Analytics business continues to be largely offset by cancellations, the majority of which are resulting from client consolidation activities. We continue to invest in product and business development activities that we believe will help expand our Fixed Income Analytics business with existing and prospective customers. For example, in July 2009, we introduced BondEdge® Cash Flow Analyst for Insurance, a new package of capabilities designed to help address the asset modeling and risk analysis needs of insurance portfolio asset-liability management.

Active Trader Services

Deteriorating conditions in the active trader market have impacted our eSignal business in recent quarters. Expansion of the eSignal business is partly dependent on the growth in online trading accounts managed by active traders. Stock market volatility is an important trend that can influence active trader subscriptions. During periods when the major stock markets are less volatile, we have experienced that active traders tend to trade less frequently and that cancellations of eSignal's services typically increase and new subscriptions slow. In addition, periods of declines in the major stock markets have greater potential to lead to an increase in cancellations of eSignal's services by traders who are unable or unwilling to withstand losses. Related to these dynamics, we have experienced period-over-period declines in eSignal's direct subscriber base in recent quarters and as a result, a decline in subscription-related revenue. Although major stock markets have experienced some signs of recovery during the past several months, it is unclear whether or when such a recovery will translate into a meaningful increase in the number of our active trader direct subscribers. Factors such as price, ease of use and range of services, including the ability to directly execute their trades, are factors active traders consider when selecting a financial information service provider. Difficult market conditions are also causing businesses that advertise online to reduce spending on online advertising, amid intensifying competition to attract advertisers. eSignal has experienced a decline in advertising revenue in recent quarters. Other factors that may affect eSignal's ability to grow include adoption of its offerings by financial institutions, the contribution of its redistribution partners who resell its data and analytics, online advertising on its financial websites, price increases and changes in demand within its suite of real-time market data terminals, which vary in price.

We believe that eSignal's future growth is dependent on expanding its direct subscriber base for its offerings with both active traders and financial institutions. In particular, we believe that the combination of vendor consolidations and increased cost pressures is creating an opportunity for adoption of eSignal's desktop solutions by financial institutions in the wealth management market. To address the evolving needs of both financial institutions and active traders worldwide, eSignal continues to invest in adding new features to its various services, establishing strategic alliances, developing new offerings, and building traffic to and advertising on its financial websites. For example, during the third quarter of 2009, eSignal released eSignal® 10.5, a significant update to its award-winning flagship software. eSignal 10.5 enables active traders to manage their portfolios more effectively through access to a broader range of content and historical data.

                             Results of Operations

                            Selected Financial Data
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