LEXIS-NEXIS ACQUIRES BIP DIVISION OF FINANCIAL TIMES ELECTRONIC PUBLISHING.

The Lexis-Nexis Group (Dayton, OH), a unit of Reed Elsevier, through its subsidiary Lexis-Nexis Europe (London), has agreed to acquire the Business Information Product (BIP) division of the Financial Times Group, a unit of Pearson plc. (London). No terms of the deal were given.

BIP's products include FT profile, FT Discovery and FT Newswatch. They are targeted to professionals in financial services, consulting, legal and media firms and companies. As part of the deal, the FT Group will extend its existing licensing agreement for U.S. and Asian markets with Lexis-Nexis to European markets. The extension of the agreement will allow Lexis to "continue to provide high value FT content to the existing customer base and to existing Lexis-Nexis customers worldwide," Lexis said.

FT Group chief executive Stephen Hill said that "the FT Group's strategy is to be a leader in the provision of business information, comment and analysis, with a global perspective. Our historic online services have a strong niche but lack the scale required to compete successfully in the world-wide market." With new ownership, the titles will "benefit from economies of scale and significant technology investment," Hill added.

The sale is part of Pearson's continuing efforts to divest "non-core" properties. Since the beginning of 1999, Pearson has sold all the assets of Macmillan Library Reference as well as other information and publishing properties. The deals include the sale of Master Data Center to Information Holdings, education book titles and Jossey-Bass to John Wiley & Sons, Appleton & Lange to McGraw-Hill, MacMillan Library Reference to Thomson Corp., the Bureau of Business Practices to Wolters Kluwer, and Briefings Publishing Group and Treasury & Risk Management to Wicks Business Information.