The long-touted joint venture between Société Générale’s and AllianceBernstein’s stock businesses appears to be going ahead, according to news out on Tuesday.

The world of professional stock investing hasn’t been a happy place in recent years. The rise and rise of cheap, index-based investing has thrown a wet blanket on professional investment services.

The “strategic” reason for the venture, then, is that SocGen, strong in trading, and AllianceBernstein, strong in research, go together like peanut butter and jelly. But the deal’s probably a bid for strength in unity too, with the firms hoping their combined weight will keep them rooted amid the gale-force industry headwinds.

Knowledge is expensive, at least for professional investors: a 2018 European rule change meant they could no longer use their clients’ cash to cover the fees they pay for research. So faced with the prospect of reaching into their own pockets, thrifty fund managers started hacking at the prices they paid research firms. 

Retail investors have a long list of cheap and easy trading avenues to choose from, so services really need to stand out from the crowd if they want to bring in users. One method’s proven popular so far: adding thought-provoking, actionable insights to a platform. If nothing else, the spate of deals in the pro world shows that quality research is still highly valued.