The Cline Group was founded with a vision to offer more current, pragmatic and effective industry training than typically available in house or via commercial course offerings. Because we believe learning and insights need to be applied and measured, we also offer select consulting and research services to market participants as well as data and application vendors and professional services firms. Our learning focus was grounded in a recognition that the breadth and depth of domain knowledge in the financial markets had been eroding at the very time when markets had become more complex, challenging, and interrelated across geographies, asset classes, and industry segments. Company founder Bill Cline, former managing partner of Accenture's global capital markets practice and long time industry entrepreneur, recognized this void in the market for effective capital markets training that could improve people's skills, provide market insights, and help to stem the rising attrition rates affecting many firms, domestically and in financial services outsourcing hubs such as India and Eastern Europe. Training budgets are often early casualties in periods of market downturn, yet professional development is the only benefit other than compensation consistently cited by survey respondents around the world as a major contributor to overall job satisfaction and retention.

Our vision was to create capital markets learning content that would go beyond traditional academic definitions of terms and emphasis on the past rather than the future. We envisioned a more predictive learning experience, one in which industry research, trends and surveys are used to understand current and projected project priorities and associated spending trends. We developed our content to create an awareness and understanding of why things were happening versus simply what was happening, a fundamental principle if a learning experience is to be pragmatic and useful in one's daily profession. Unlike most commerical or in house training, we profile leading traditional and alternative exchanges, trading and portfolio systems, data solutions, IT infrastructure, and industry "pain points" to understand the innovations being developed in house and by commercial vendors.

Leveraging leading market research from the Aite Group, newsletters, and other research sources such as the World Federation of Exchanges, The Cline Group developed training materials that extensively incorporate tangible industry metrics, trends, and current events to understand the momentum, business rationale, and levels of spending on new business capabilities, systems, market information, compliance, hardware and software, people, outsourcing, and professional services.

We also provide select strategic consulting services for financial services firms and service providers to the capital markets industry as well as media commentary on significant trends and developments in the global financial markets. Clients of the Gerson Lehrman Group and Vista Research expert networks can schedule one-on-one phone consultations with Bill Cline and attend his speaking engagements as a GLG Educator.