A group of upstarts is seizing on new European Union rules to shake up banks’ matchmaking role between investors and corporate executives.

As investors prepare for EU regulations that will force them to pay for research products a la carte, one of the most valuable services is Corporate Access — the conferences, roadshows and face time with executives that can provide an information edge. Investors globally spend more than $2 billion a year for corporate access, according to consulting firm Greenwich Associates.

That spending was typically baked in to trading commissions paid to a bank. Making it a separately priced service provides a big opportunity for people like Adrian Rusling, founder of a site that counts executives at BlackRock Inc., Credit Suisse Group AG and FedEx Corp. among its users.

“It’s like Match.com,” said Rusling, who started www.CorporateAccessNetwork.com in 2013 as an offshoot of investor-relations firm Phoenix-IR based near Brussels. “Instead of boys meeting girls, it’s companies trying to meet investors. We thought, ‘Let’s democratize this industry a bit and open it up a bit more.’”

Planning for Europe’s MiFID II rules, which take effect in January, has driven a 50 percent surge in daily user requests so far this year, Rusling said.

Link to original story: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-04-25/bank-research-rules-open-door-to-match-com-for-investors-ceos