About CEIC Data

CEIC Data

Overview

CEIC Data is a macroeconomic data provider founded in Hong Kong in 1992 and operating through https://www.ceicdata.com. It was founded by a team of expert economists and analysts and built its reputation on hard-to-obtain data about China, at a time when reliable, systematically organised Chinese economic statistics were difficult for outside economists to access. From that Hong Kong base providing data for economists hungry for information on China, CEIC has since expanded its coverage to more than 200 countries and economies worldwide. Its products are time-series databases used by economists, analysts, financial institutions, researchers and libraries to compare indicators such as gross domestic product, consumer prices, imports, exports, foreign direct investment, retail sales and interest rates across countries. In a directory of news and information agencies, CEIC belongs with the data wires: it does not report events as a newspaper does, but it supplies the verified economic series on which financial reporting and economic analysis depend.

Founding in Hong Kong in 1992

CEIC was founded in Hong Kong in 1992 by a team of expert economists and analysts. The company itself marks that date as its origin: in May 2022 it celebrated its 30th anniversary, describing itself in that anniversary release as originally a Hong Kong-based enterprise providing hard-to-get data for economists hungry for information on China, which has since expanded its coverage to over 200 countries worldwide. CEIC says it forged its reputation as a must-have resource through the scrupulous selection of the very best data, and that its products are about people and relationships with primary sources in numerous countries, giving clients access to detailed and credible data. It describes its standard as providing economic information clients can trust that is easy to access and updated almost instantaneously, implemented by experts on the ground in each country it works in, and it employs data analysts in multiple offices around the globe. That founding model, local analysts working with primary sources, remains the explanation CEIC gives for the depth of its emerging-market coverage.

The China Premium Database

The product on which the company was built is its China database, now known as the China Premium Database. A CEIC brochure for the database states that, with over 386,000 time series, the China Premium Database carries time points as early as 1949 and is maintained constantly by a dedicated team of analysts through close collaboration with primary local sources in China. Library guides record the same database at other points in its growth: the Australian National University guide describes the China Premium Database, available in both English and Chinese, as offering over 293,000 time-series records on macroeconomic, sector, industry and regional data dating back to 1949, while a later guide from the Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen describes approximately 700,000 time series, some tracing back to 1949, drawn from over 700 data sources including official institutions, industry associations and well-known enterprises. The rising counts in successive descriptions reflect a database that kept adding series. Its organisation is systematic: 18 macroeconomic sectors in the brochure's account, covering national accounts, government and public finance, socio-demographic data, labour markets, domestic trade and household surveys, foreign trade, balance of payments, investment, business and economic surveys and monetary data, alongside industry sectors.

Depth of the China coverage

The detail inside the China Premium Database is what distinguishes it from a simple set of headline indicators. The CEIC brochure highlights exclusive and detailed year-on-year and month-on-month consumer price index components, monthly government revenue and expenditure data for over 200 cities, aggregate financing flow and stock data with flow data segmented by 31 provinces, and comprehensive datasets of monitoring indicators such as purchasing managers' indexes, leading indexes, business and entrepreneurs' surveys, banking surveys and consumer surveys. On the industry side, industrial products output data covers more than 500 products, manufacturing industry operating data covers over 600 industries, data covering 31 provinces and cities is systematically organised by energy type, automobile data is broken down by more than 600 manufacturers and by models, production and sales, and the database carries detailed insurance operating data for 36 items in the brochure's description. The Shenzhen library guide adds that the China database includes regional macro data spanning provinces, cities and even counties, with in-depth coverage of over 30 provincial-level administrative regions, 330 prefecture-level regions and over 2,000 county-level regions. For an economist tracking the Chinese economy below the national level, that regional depth is the core of the product.

The Global Database and CDMNext

China was the starting point rather than the limit. CEIC's Global Database extends the same time-series model across the world: a 2018 description stated that CEIC provides a global economic database covering over 200 countries and 18 macroeconomic sectors, and library guides describe the Global Database as containing millions of time series, with one guide recording over 5 million time series from more than 210 countries and regions including China, the United States, the European Union, the United Kingdom, Japan and Brazil. Access is through CDMNext, CEIC's data manager platform. A University of Michigan guide describes CDMNext as providing access to global economic data with a particular focus on emerging economies, including macroeconomic, financial and industry data across more than 200 countries collected from official and alternative sources, with datasets including the Global Database and World Trend Plus and special-focus economic datasets for Brazil, Russia, India, Indonesia and China. The Indonesia Premium Database shows the same premium-country model applied elsewhere: the Australian National University guide describes it as offering over 200,000 time-series records on macroeconomic and sector data, with full coverage of Indonesia's 33 provinces for each data segment.

Ownership under Euromoney

CEIC's first change of ownership came in 2005, when it was purchased by Euromoney Institutional Investor PLC, the London Stock Exchange-listed financial information group. Under Euromoney, CEIC formed part of the group's Global Market Intelligence Division, usually abbreviated to GMID, alongside EMIS, a business information provider for emerging markets founded in 1994 and purchased by Euromoney in 1998. The division's two main units were complementary: CEIC provided global financial information and data from the macroeconomic perspective, while EMIS provided it from the micro, company and industry perspective, both with a focus on key financial and business data for emerging markets. Euromoney later announced its intention to explore strategic options for the division; GMID reported revenue of about 52.7 million United States dollars and earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation of 14.5 million dollars in 2016, figures cited when the sale process became public. The Euromoney period, from 2005 to 2018, is when CEIC's China-rooted database operated as one half of a larger emerging-markets intelligence division inside a British listed group.

Sale to Caixin Global and CITIC Capital in 2018

On 12 February 2018 Caixin Global, the overseas arm of Caixin Media focusing on English news, intelligence and the global market, together with the private equity arm of CITIC Capital Holdings Limited, agreed to purchase the Global Market Intelligence Division from Euromoney for 180.5 million United States dollars. The acquisition was expected to be completed by the end of April 2018, and CITIC Capital announced on 30 April 2018 that the consortium had successfully completed the acquisition for an equity value of 180.5 million dollars; Euromoney was reported to receive about 145 million dollars in gross proceeds. After completion, Caixin Global and CITIC Capital, together with the experienced management team from CEIC and EMIS, would jointly manage the company's affairs, with Caixin Global taking the lead in leveraging capabilities and resources from Caixin Media and Caixin Insight to design financial data products suited to the Chinese market. Caixin's own reporting described the deal as one of the biggest offshore purchases ever by a mainstream Chinese media company and the biggest purchase to date for Caixin, as it aspired to build a global news and information platform. The buyers also said CEIC and EMIS, whose data products were mainly personal-computer-based, would devote more resources to customised data products matching clients' workflows across interfaces from personal computers to mobile devices.

ISI Emerging Markets Group and the Montagu exit

After the 2018 carve-out from Euromoney, the two brands CEIC and EMIS were integrated under ISI Emerging Markets Group, which provided access to 220 million pieces of content from over 6,000 high-quality sources in over 15 languages to customers across the globe, under a subscription-based model for macroeconomic, company and industry information. In November 2020 Caixin Global announced that the consortium led by itself and CITIC Capital had agreed a full exit from its investment in ISI Emerging Markets Group through a sale to Montagu, a leading European private equity firm, with completion expected the following month subject to customary closing requirements. At that point ISI was described as having over 540 employees based in 19 offices across the globe and as having provided data, analysis and research on emerging markets for over 25 years. Caixin chairwoman Hu Shuli said the cooperation had been effective, particularly in bringing CEIC deeper into the Chinese market and bringing new opportunities for its development and operation on mobile platforms, while CITIC Capital chairman and chief executive Yichen Zhang said the firm was delighted to have supported ISI's management through a period of strong financial performance and organisational development.

Alternative data and the 30th anniversary

By its 30th anniversary in May 2022, CEIC was presenting itself as a leading provider of emerging-market alternative data as well as traditional macroeconomic series. Its anniversary release listed the new types of data it had added: high-frequency trade statistics on imports and exports; mobility trends covering air traffic and public transport; consumption and production data including credit card transactions and commodity production; labour market data such as job postings and vacancies and benefit claims; supply chain data including container and port data and freight transport; real-time energy and food prices; environmental data on air quality and carbon emissions; and real estate data on property prices and transactions and mortgage applications. Chief executive Steve Pulley said the information needs around emerging markets had evolved dramatically in the 30 years of CEIC's existence and that the company had always aimed to deliver the data that mattered most to customers. The anniversary statement described CEIC as by then considered the leading emerging-market provider of both traditional and alternative data for economists, an expansion from the statistical yearbook series on which the China database was originally built.

Offices, research and place in economic data

CEIC's Asia office anchors the business in the city where it was founded. A CEIC brochure lists its Asia office on the 15th floor of V Point, 18 Tang Lung Street, Causeway Bay, Hong Kong, alongside a North America office in New York, a Europe office in London and a Latin America office in São Paulo, Brazil. The company also puts its data to work in its own publications: its macroeconomic research team produced China Economy in a Snapshot, a quarterly report providing a concise overview of current economic and financial developments in China, produced using data from CEIC's China Premium and World Trend Plus databases. CEIC Data's place in the information industry is therefore distinctive. Founded in Hong Kong in 1992 by economists and analysts to solve the problem of hard-to-get China data, owned by Euromoney from 2005, sold with EMIS to Caixin Global and CITIC Capital for 180.5 million dollars in 2018 and later held under ISI Emerging Markets Group, it remains best known for a China Premium Database whose hundreds of thousands of series reach back to 1949, now set within a global database covering more than 200 economies.