LONDON (Reuters) - UBS has suspended research data feeds to data provider Bloomberg and other third-party platforms which are unable to ensure the data is only seen by the Swiss bank's clients, a UBS memo to staff seen by Reuters showed.

The move is in response to the European Union's Markets in Financial Instruments Directive II, which went live in January and requires brokers to put a price on their research for the first time to drive transparency and improve value for investors.

After years of bundling their research together with services such as trade execution, brokers now have to fight for a slice of what many analysts expect to be a shrinking pool of client money dedicated to spend on research.

In the memo to staff, Juan Luis Perez, UBS's global head of research, said given MiFID II, the bank was looking to "better protect the value of our research content, which we hope will ultimately be for our and our clients' benefit".

"We are therefore letting our clients know that we will be suspending data feeds to third-party platforms (e.g., Bloomberg) that do not meet our requirements (including the use of client entitlements for access to our data on UBS Research ratings, price targets and estimates)," he wrote. 

Bloomberg had no immediate comment.

The changes should not affect clients' access to UBS research on any platform where they had the correct permissions, and they would also be able to access it on the UBS website.

UBS's action had earlier been reported by the Australian Financial Review.

(Reporting by Simon Jessop. Editing by Jane Merriman)