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By Beverly Chander, Opalesque London:

The Boston headquartered research firm Cerulli Associates is coming up to its 20th birthday. Rachael Malatesta, Director of Marketing at Cerulli explains that Kurt Cerulli founded it in 1992, initially starting the business as a consultancy, offering consulting services to asset managers mainly mutual funds. The firm published reports in tandem and some 12 years later gave up the consultancy to focus on their publishing activities.

"Our niche is understanding asset management distribution" explains Malatesta. And increasingly the firm operates on a global stage covering the U.S., Europe, Asia, Latin America, from both the retail and institutional perspectives. "We look at the various markets and help firms understand the addressable opportunity, including the challenges, and if they should pursue, expand, or decrease their focus," she explains.

Cerulli examines factors such as demographics, product development trends, and the regulatory environment when it is gauging attractiveness of certain markets.

The market crisis of 2008 impacted their business somewhat. "When firms are forced to cut budgets across the board, often times secondary research can be deemed expendable," says Malatesta. "But many of our global clients are increasingly establishing a permanent line item for market research in their annual budgets, and we have increased our account management resources in order to help them with this process."

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