First Call to Offer Corporate Direct; Strategic Investor Relations Tool Will Provide Japanese Corporate Financial Information On Global Scale.

BOSTON--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- May 4, 1998 - First Call Corp., a division of Thomson Financial Services (TFS), is partnering with General Solutions Inc., a Japanese investor relations (IR) specialist firm, to develop a new service called Corporate Direct (CD). This product will be available to customers in May 1998.

Through CD, corporations, analysts and institutional money managers worldwide will gain direct access to financial information on Japanese companies. These Japanese companies also will be able to transmit crucial financial news and information directly to global markets and will gain access to analyst reports. The information transmitted will be predominantly in English and will include annual reports, brief earnings announcements, press releases and corporate profiles.

"Corporate Direct will enable Japanese corporations and analysts worldwide to communicate with one another electronically and in real-time," said Robert Leone, senior vice president of developing businesses and markets at First Call Corp. "Corporate Direct will offer Japanese corporations invaluable insight into how they are viewed by analysts. With CD, corporations also can assess how they compare to other companies within their industry. Effective IR strategies can be formulated based on this information."

CD will be available over Research Direct on the Web, which can be accessed from www.firstcall.com. It also will be available over RD-J, a Japanese-language version of Research Direct, which can be accessed from www.firstcall.co.jp.

Research Direct allows clients to electronically access over 545,000 original, commingled, full-text equity research reports in real-time. More than 200 brokerage firms from Asia, Australia, Europe, Japan, North America and South America use Research Direct to distribute their research reports. All of Institutional Investor's top 20 ranked U.S. research firms currently contribute to the service. Research Direct is used by more than 20,000 institutional money managers worldwide. More than 300 investor relations professionals at U.S. corporations also use the service.

General Solutions was founded in 1982 as an independent IR specialist. The Tokyo-based company, which has an office in the U.S., has long been an advocate of IR activities based on global standards. Annual report production is a core business sector. There are more than 70 clients, including high-profile names such as Sony, Toshiba and Mitsubishi Corp. General Solutions was first in the industry to completely digitize copybooks. With the conversion of printed materials into Portable Document File format, the company is promoting the digitization of IR tools as well. In October 1996, General Solutions inaugurated GCIS (www.gcis.com), a comprehensive IR site for investors seeking information on Japanese corporations in English. The site receives 120,000 hits monthly, 60 percent of which are from outside Japan.

First Call Corp. delivers real-time, commingled research, earnings estimates and corporate information to the worldwide financial community. FIRST CALL NotesS offers its users real-time delivery of global commingled morning meeting comments, intra-day research broadcasts and special equity notes from more than 250 sell-side institutions worldwide. First Call's Real Time Earnings Estimates Database offers access to real-time earnings estimates on more than 18,000 companies as provided by more than 560 brokerage firms worldwide. From this database, First Call produces the FIRST CALL consensus estimate, a proprietary number often cited in leading financial publications. The FIRST CALL Fundamentals Database compiles critical fundamental data on more than 7,180 public companies and the FIRST CALL Recommendations Database compiles individual buy/sell/hold recommendations from Wall Street analysts. First Call produces a proprietary FIRST CALL consensus recommendation from this collection. First Call is also a leader in delivery of commingled fixed income research notes, analysis and full-text research reports via FIRST CALL BondCall DirectS. In addition, First Call provides its products to investor relations professionals via its Corporate Services division, with more than 2,200 companies using FIRST CALL to send and/or receive financial news. For more information, visit First Call's Web site at www.firstcall.com.

Thomson Financial Services is a leading provider of quality financial information, research, analysis and software products to the worldwide financial and corporate communities.

CONTACT: First Call,

Karen Witham, 617/856-2208

Faye Fardshisheh, 617/856-1158