17 MAY 1999
DOW JONES AND REUTERS COMBINE INTERACTIVE
BUSINESS SERVICES
NEW VENTURE WILL OFFER COMBINED INTERNET PRODUCT TO GLOBAL CORPORATE DESKTOP
MARKET
London - Dow Jones and Company and Reuters announced today that they have agreed
to combine their interactive business services, Dow Jones Interactive and
Reuters Business Briefing.
The agreement will result in the formation of a new joint venture, Dow Jones
Reuters Business Interactive LLC, with combined 1998 revenues of more than
US$225 million. The new company will be a leading global service provider of
proprietary and third-party business information to corporate and professional
markets. Importantly, it will target business professionals at their desktops
through Internet distribution.
Dow Jones Reuters Business Interactive LLC will develop an innovative new
web-based service to provide corporate news, information and research data for
many categories of business professionals. It is currently planned to launch
this product, with its innovative features and functionality, within 12 months.
Before the new product is launched, both Dow Jones and Reuters will provide
proprietary content to one another's existing products enabling their respective
customers to access and benefit from their combined information sources.
Both companies believe that the potential for developing the business
information market for corporate users is significant. Independent research
indicates that there are some five million potential corporate users worldwide,
and that the corporate information market may be worth some US$6 billion by
2002. The new company will be well positioned to benefit from the growth in this
market. It will provide multiple language content and interfaces and will extend
its penetration into developed markets in North America and Western Europe and
exploit emerging markets in Asia, Eastern Europe and Latin America.
PETER JOB, Reuters chief executive, said: "The business information market is
growing rapidly. To benefit fully from its growth one needs size, considerable
information access and a leading market position. This combination provides
those attributes and offers both partners excellent opportunities to realise the
potential of the business information market worldwide, particularly through
exploiting Internet technology. We are delighted to have been able to bring
about this venture."
PETER KANN, chairman and chief executive officer, Dow Jones and Company, said:
"Combining Dow Jones Interactive and Reuters Business Briefing will bring
together the leading, state-of-the-art business `current awareness' and archival
services in North America, Europe and Asia, which we expect to be a `must-have'
offering for every corporate desktop worldwide. We're thrilled to have completed
this agreement."
The new joint venture company will be owned equally by Reuters and Dow Jones
with a board of directors comprising representatives from the two companies. Its
president and chief executive will be Timothy Andrews, currently vice president
and editor of enterprise products for Dow Jones Interactive Publishing. The
non-executive chairmanship of the board will rotate between the two parent
companies. Rob Rowley, Reuters finance director, will be the first to hold the
position.
Dow Jones Interactive, formerly known as Dow Jones News/Retrieval, provides
archival material from The Wall Street Journal and Dow Jones Newswires and more
than 6,000 other publications and is currently available on more than 650,000
desktops around the world. Reuters Business Briefing delivers to over 6,000
corporations and financial institutions a database of over 4,000 sources
including leading newspapers, newswires, trade journals and magazines as well as
archived Reuters news wires.
The new venture will have archival rights to The Wall Street Journal, including
its international editions, and be able to access extensive content from more
than 7,000 international business news and information sources in 20 languages,
with user interfaces in 11 of these languages.
The new venture does not involve the two companies' consumer Internet products,
including The Wall Street Journal Interactive Edition and Reuters digital new
media products, nor their competing real-time financial newswires.
End
CONTACT:
REUTERS:
Geoff Wicks Tel: +44 171 542 8666
Director, Corporate Relations
geoff.wicks@reuters.com
Peter V. Thomas Tel: +44 171 542 4890
Director, Media Relations
peter.v.thomas@reuters.com
Robert Crooke Tel: (212) 603 3587
Vice President, Media Relations, Reuters America Inc.
robert.crooke@reuters.com
Nancy Bobrowitz Tel: (212) 603 3345
Vice President, Investor Relations, Reuters America Inc.
nancy.bobrowitz@reuters.com
DOW JONES & COMPANY
Richard Tofel Tel: (212) 416 2951
Vice President, Corporate Communications
dick.tofel@dowjones.com
VALERIE GERARD TEL: (212) 416 2687
Director of Investor Relations
valerie.gerard@dowjones.com
Brigitte Trafford Tel: +44 171 842 9690
Director of Corporate Communications, London
brigitte.trafford@dowjones.com
NOTE TO EDITORS
PRESS BRIEFINGS
NEW YORK - 17 MAY 1999:
There will be a press conference in New York today at 4pm (BST). UK and European
press may listen in to this event by dialling:
Domestic (US) 800 633 8763
International: 001 212 346 6423
(Quoting reservation number 12376646 for both)
London - 18 May 1999:
Timothy Andrews (CEO, Dow Jones Reuters Business Interactive LLC) and Michele
Lally (Director, Reuters Corporate Information Group) will be available to brief
the press and answer questions on Tuesday 18 May at 2.30pm.
The press briefing will take place at:
Financial Dynamics, 30 Furnival Street, London EC4.
Registration and coffee from 2.15pm
For further information or to register, please contact:
Shirley Andrew / Bridget Currie, Financial Dynamics, tel: 0171 831 3113
ABOUT DOW JONES & COMPANY
In addition to Dow Jones Interactive, Dow Jones & Company publishes The Wall
Street Journal and its international and Interactive editions, Dow Jones
Newswires, Dow Jones Indexes, Barron's and SmartMoney magazines and other
periodicals, and the Ottaway group of community newspapers. Dow Jones is
co-owner of the CNBC television operations in Europe and Asia, and also provides
news content to CNBC in the U.S.
For more details see www.dj.com
ABOUT REUTERS
Reuters supplies the global financial markets and the news media with the widest
range of information and news products including real-time financial data,
collective investment data, numerical, textual, historical and graphical
databases plus news, graphics, news video, and news pictures, reaching over
485,000 users located in 57,900 organisations. Reuters designs and installs
enterprise-wide information management and risk management systems for the
financial markets as well as providing equity and foreign exchange transaction
systems. It extensively uses internet technologies for wider distribution of
information and news. The Group employed 16,938 staff in 218 cities in 96
countries at 31 December 1998. Reuters is the world's largest news and
television agency with 2,072 journalists, photographers and camera operators in
182 bureaux serving 157 countries. News is published in 23 languages.
For more details see www.reuters.com/aboutreuters
Reuters and the dotted and sphere logos are the trademarks of the Reuters Group
of Companies.
THIS RELEASE CONTAINS FORWARD LOOKING STATEMENTS THAT INVOLVE RISKS AND
UNCERTAINTIES THAT COULD CAUSE ACTUAL RESULTS TO DIFFER MATERIALLY FROM THOSE
ANTICIPATED. SUCH RISKS AND UNCERTAINTIES INCLUDE, BUT ARE NOT LIMITED TO, THE
SIZE OF THE CORPORATE DESKTOP MARKET FOR ON-LINE BUSINESS INFORMATION AND
RESEARCH SERVICES AND THE EXTENT TO WHICH THAT MARKET GROWS; COMPETITION FROM
OTHER ON-LINE AND TRADITIONAL BUSINESS INFORMATION SERVICES; DIFFICULTIES OR
DELAYS THAT MAY BE ENCOUNTERED IN THE DEVELOPMENT, PRODUCTION, TESTING OR
IMPLEMENTATION OF NEW PRODUCTS; AND SUCH OTHER RISK FACTORS AS HAVE BEEN OR MAY
BE INCLUDED FROM TIME TO TIME IN THE REPORTS THAT REUTERS GROUP PLC OR DOW JONES
& COMPANY, INC. FILE WITH THE SEC.