After three-and-a-half grim years of spending cuts, the global securities industry is expected to spend $71.5 billion on information technology (IT) in 2004, according to new research from TowerGroup, which is being presented at its annual conference in Boston today.
As the U.S. economy recovers and returns to a revenue-growth mode, buy-side and sell-side firms are ready to spend once again, “at a much more controlled and measured growth rate,” writes Robert Hegarty, vice president, securities & investments, at TowerGroup, the Needham, Mass.-based technology research and consultancy.

But the $71.4 billion estimate for 2004 represents only a 1.4 percent increase over the $69.9 billion total spent in 2003. “It’s barely increasing,” says Hegarty. This is still far below the highs in IT spending, which hit $86.2 billion back in 2000.

In fact, last year, TowerGroup was predicting flat-to-slightly-down IT budgets, but it revised its estimates in April 2003 as budgets began to loosen to predict flat- to plus- or minus-two percent growth, notes Hegarty.

These forecasts are contained in a series of ViewPoints published by TowerGroup this week, which examine IT spending trends across three sectors in the global securities and investments industry: including institutional brokerage, retail brokerage and investment/asset management.

Of the total $71.5 billion, North America is pulling ahead of the rest of the world in IT spending, with 42 percent of the total pie, as compared to Europe (35.2 percent), which is declining slightly.

read the full story:
http://www.wallstreetandtech.com/story/topNews/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=20900072