Global marketplace.

• Author: Bohland, Kathleen
• Position: Standard and Poor's Compustat

Standard & Poor's Englewood-based international department gathers financial data from London to Jakarta

Takashi Hatakeyama grew up in bustling Tokyo, an asphalt city where high-rise buildings block the sky and people crowd the streets.

Rachel Boyer-von Reiche was born on New Caledonia, an island in the Pacific shaped like a loaf of French bread, so small you can drive from one end to the other in four hours.

"Tokyo is like living underground," said Hatakeyama, 29. "Everywhere there is concrete."

"I needed some asphalt," said Boyer-von Reiche, 27. "Too many palm trees."

They met a world away in suburban Denver, both working for the global division of Standard &: Poor's Compustat.

They are among a group of 35 employees who form an unusual enclave in this very American area. They represent 19 countries, speak 21 languages and capture international financial information from 80 countries - with another six or so due by year's end.

Their Englewood office looks typically American, with its cubicles and computers. But the buzz of conversation can be in French or Japanese or German. Other languages include Thai, Indonesian, Chinese, Taiwanese, Finnish, Russian, Dutch, Italian and Spanish. The cubicles and walls are decorated with international flags.

Many in the group were recruited from American universities to join Standard & Poor's, but their experiences and backgrounds are as diverse as the countries they represent.

Hatakeyama left Japan at 21, first traveling to Spokane, Wash., and then to Colorado State University in Fort Collins, where he finished his degree in finance. He manages 16 people, who cover a territory from Turkey through Australia and speak Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Indonesian, Thai, Spanish and Portuguese.

Boyer-von Reiche, who speaks French, English and some Spanish, handles the European group, which includes Europe, Africa, Turkey, Greece and Canada. She left home at 18 to study in Guam and later finished her degree in accounting at the University of Denver, choosing her new home literally by pointing to a spot on a map.

Jens Zimmermann, 34, of Munich, first experienced the United States as an exchange student at the University of Minnesota and later earned a degree in global finance at the University of Denver.

For him, the Rocky Mountain region didn't seem too different from his native Germany.

"I thought it was fairly similar," he said. "I came from a big city near the mountains."

But Colorado was pure culture shock for Chandra...