Jeffrey C. Sprecher
Analyst
Thank you for that. We justify, internally, our ability to do M&A by our ability to control cost because that's what the market expects us to do. But as you are alluding to, the reality is, as managers, we're looking to the real revenue opportunities and how we can really increase our return on invested capital by growing the top line. We don't advertise it because it's not necessarily accepted or appreciated, but it's definitely part of our thinking. When this business comes together, we're going to be, as I mentioned in my prepared remarks, a multi-asset class company with a really good clearing infrastructure at a moment in time when people are going to want as much portfolio margining and cross collateralization as is acceptable within the constraints of operating a secure market. Secondly, we are going to be a massive data provider. What you've seen over time is that people used to buy data, consolidated data, that was very, very spread out through the markets and data aggregators aggregated it up and sold terminals and feeds to people. And what you're seeing over time is a recognition that it's not the terminal or the feed that is important, it's the underlying data. And that data is increasingly consolidated around exchanges and clearing house and, ultimately, SEFs. And so I think you're going to see fundamental changes in the way the data business operates. You've been seeing that trend already, ICE has increasingly been getting more and more in the data business. And now we're going to have an amazing data set. Lastly, with more attention being paid on the physical markets and the way price formation happens on the benchmarks, you're increasingly going to see regulatory scrutiny on the way those benchmarks and other things are built up and compiled. That, again, lends itself to a company like ours that has a strong regulatory infrastructure, compliance infrastructure and relationship with end users, that's why we're excited about, ultimately, Liffe's successful acquisition of the LIBOR contract. We produced Brent settlement prices here and we're going to be acquiring, as part of the deal, we already have a relationship with Russell. We're going to be acquiring a relationship with FTSE, with [indiscernible], MSCI. So increasingly, our intellectual property portfolio of data that can be disseminated will be meaningful.