Financial Times buys into Marketwatch
Published: 16 Nov 1999 10:31 GMT
It's not a merger, but two of the Web's biggest financial sites are now at least kissing cousins.
Pearson, the British owner of the Financial Times, will acquire one third of CBS.Marketwatch.com as part of a broader deal that will see it merge its FTAM asset management business with Data Broadcasting, one of the owners of CBS.Marketwatch.com.
The deal will link two top media companies -- FT owners Pearson Plc and CBS, which also owns a third of Marketwatch -- via their popular financial information Web sites, which will cross-promote each other in a marketing pact.
The FT Group said merging the FTAM asset valuation business with Data Broadcasting (Nasdaq:DBCC) will create a business with combined revenues of some $320 million this year.
Data Broadcasting (DBC), worth half a billion dollars at Friday's market close, is issuing 56.5 million shares in itself to Pearson, giving the British media group a 60 percent stake in the enlarged company, to be led by FTAM President Stuart Clark.
"Together we will broaden our scope of services across the specialist asset management and portfolio evaluation markets and deliver more of our products by Internet," FT Group CEO Stephen Hill said.
The FT said the combined asset valuation business offers comprehensive information for institutional, professional and individual investors round the world.
Its own data had been aimed more at specialists whereas DBC's services, with its real-time quote-streaming service, were tailored more to individuals.
DBC owns 32 percent of Marketwatch.com, which operates the CBS-branded Web site. Hill said market-oriented CBS.Marketwatch.com and business-oriented FT.com were distinctive and complementary products and the deal opened up opportunities for the FT's online business.
He told Reuters the two sites would stay separate. "I don't think they will merge," he said. "(but) they are very compatible.''
CBS.Marketwatch is attracting some 4.6 million visitors a month and Hill said FT.com was now up to some 800,000-900,000 monthly visitors, compared with a third of that six months ago.
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