COMPETITIVE MEDIA REPORTING SOLD TO TAYLOR NELSON SOFRES.

Taylor Nelson Sofres plc. (TNS; London), a marketing information company, has acquired Competitive Media Reporting (CMR; New York), a part of VNU Marketing Information, from VNU (Haarlem, The Neth.) for $88 million in cash. The deal, expected to be completed by the end of April, is subject to Federal Trade Commission approval.

CMR is being sold by VNU at the behest of the FTC. When the company purchased Nielsen Media Research in October it agreed with the FTC to sell CMR. CMR monitors advertising expenditures across 14 media segments for advertisers, ad agencies, radio and television stations and publishing companies. CMR. Interactive monitors the U.S. Internet ad expenditure business. Its "Inter-Watch" product monitors 335 Web sites, including Yahoo! and Netscape, representing 85-90% of all Internet ad expenditure. In the year ending Dec. 31, 1999, CMR had pro-forma profit before taxes of $7.5 million on revenues of $54.1 million and net assets of $8.9 million. TNS executive chairman Tony Cowling noted that "CMR has an impressive market share, tracking around 25% of the world's advertising expenditure. We have identified media monitoring as a key growth sector... and this is a major step forward for us. It builds on the acquisitions we have made to establish our leading position in Europe," including France, Spain, Scandinavia and the U.K., "over the past couple of years."