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JPMorgan invests in fixed-income data startup

A view of the exterior of the JP Morgan Chase & Co. corporate headquarters in New York City May 20, 2015. REUTERS/Mike Segar/Files

By Anna Irrera (Reuters) - JPMorgan Chase & Co has made a strategic investment in Mosaic Smart Data, a company that has developed technology to help banks make their fixed-income sales and trading businesses more profitable. The bank, whose fixed-income revenue slumped last year, has taken a minority stake in the London-based startup, the companies said in London on Wednesday. The financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. Mosaic will use the funding to double its headcount and expand its platform to cover additional asset classes for new and existing clients, according to a person familiar with the deal. The investment comes after JPMorgan revealed in October that it had signed a multiyear deal to use Mosaic's technology globally. Mosaic sells technology that collects and analyzes data from the fixed-income trading divisions of banks to help them make more informed decisions and secure more deals. The platform helps visualize data and can be used traders to figure out which clients are more likely to be interested in a given deal. It can also be used by bank bosses to determine which trading desk or trader has been performing better. The investment comes as financial institutions look to adopt more technology that can help them take advantage of the vast amounts of data they store. Banks have also been looking for ways to deal with a liquidity crunch in fixed-income markets. Tougher post-financial crisis capital requirements have made it more expensive for them to act as market makers in some fixed-income assets, leading their fixed-income divisions to slump. (Reporting by Anna Irrera; Editing by Jonathan Oatis)