Dow Jones acquires Marketwatch; starts service for Chinese bond/money markets.Dow Jones & Co. (New York New York, state, United States New York, Middle Atlantic state of the United States. It is bordered by Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and the Atlantic Ocean (E), New Jersey and Pennsylvania (S), Lakes Erie and Ontario and the Canadian province of ) has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Marketwatch, Inc. (San Francisco, CA) in a cash transaction valued at $519 million, or $18 per fully diluted common share, or $463 million net of cash of Marketwatch. Subject to regulatory approval, the deal is expected to close in first quarter 2005. Marketwatch's two largest investors are CBS (Cell Broadcast Service) See cell broadcast. and Pearson plc., parent of The Financial Times Group. They each own approximately 22.3% of Marketwatch's common stock, with the remainder being publicly traded. Marketwatch provides business news, financial information and analytical tools. Established in 1997, the company operates two web sites, CBS.Marketwatch.com and BigCharts.com, produces television shows and financial reports for CBS, provides updates every 30 minutes via a radio network and offers subscription products for individual investors, including the "Hulbert Financial Digest Hulbert Financial Digest A monthly newsletter devoted to information about investment advisory letters. The publication includes a top-five ranking of advisory letters during short and extended periods, along with commentary and detailed " series of products, Retirement Weekly and ETF ETF See Exchange Traded Fund. ETF See exchange-traded fund (ETF). Trader. Marketwatch will be integrated into the Dow Jones Consumer Electronics Publishing business, which includes WSJ WSJ Wall Street Journal WSJ Wisconsin State Journal (Madison, WI) WSJ Web Services Journal WSJ Winston-Salem Journal (North Carolina) WSJ Wagle Street Journal (Kathmandu, Nepal blog) .com, various related vertical web sites, content licensing operations and the Wall Street Journal Radio Network. After the integration, Dow Jones web sites will have more than nine million unique visitors each month. Operational cost synergies from combining the two operations are expected to total $12 million. The deal will be accretive to earnings per share in 2006. In related news, Dow Jones Newswires Dow Jones Newswires is the real-time financial news organization owned by Dow Jones. Founded in 1882, its primary competitors are Bloomberg L.P. and Reuters. The company reports more than 420,000 subscribers -- including brokers, traders, analysts and fund managers -- as of July has launched the China Capital Markets Service (CCMS CCMS Computing Center Management System CCMS Committee on the Challenges of Modern Society (NATO) CCMS Child Care Management Services CCMS Cincinnati College of Mortuary Science CCMS Cerebrocostomandibular Syndrome ), a Chinese-language online product that provides real-time information and analysis for investors and traders in China's money and bond markets. It is available over the trading terminals of Northern Star, China's leading vendor for the domestic fixed-income markets. Finally, Dow Jones' Far Eastern Economic Review will change its format from a newsweekly to a monthly magazine beginning with a December issue. The company said the title has lost money for the last six years. |
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