Multex.com Sponsors the First Industry Owned Research Markup Language Organization -IRML.org-; Announces Organization's Inaugural Meeting for Development of XML Standards.

Business & Technology Editors

NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--April 17, 2000

Multex.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:MLTX), the Internet's leading financial e-marketplace connecting buyers and sellers of financial services and information, announced today its initiation and sponsorship of the Investment Research Markup Language Organization, IRML.org (www.irml.org), an industry association comprised of key members from all facets of the global financial services industry. IRML.org will provide a forum where all participants in the Investment Research community can come together to develop a nonproprietary, industry-wide standard for the creation and exchange of Investment Research using XML technology.

"XML is the next generation standard for the publishing of data and documents on the Internet, and offers many advantages over current publishing methods," said John Mahoney, Chief Technology Officer at Multex.com. "XML will be key in enabling the creation of content both for the multiple constituencies it is being called upon to serve, as well as myriad new technologies such as wireless devices and electronic books that are making their way into the market."

IRML.org is an independent standards consortium whose membership is open to any company that creates, distributes, or consumes "Investment Research" or related financial content. One of the first aims of the initiative is to continue to amass an active global membership which will encompass the entire financial research domain.

"The success of the Internet clearly demonstrates the value of nonproprietary standards," John Mahoney, continued. "Similarly, it is crucial for the success of IRML.org that the standards proposed be owned and embraced by the financial community overall and not by any specific vendor."

IRML.org proposes a phased approach to adopting the new technology. Immediately, firms will be able to distribute Investment Research products as they create them today but include additional meta data files (including earnings estimates, recommendations, etc) in an XML format. This will allow firms an entry point for using XML and working with IRML(tm). Early adoption of XML will allow firms to better leverage their existing research creation and/or retrieval processes, without having to re-engineer their entire research creation process.

"In many ways, current broker research production and distribution practices are obstacles to the effective communication of analysts' ideas," said Graham Millington, Global Head of Research Communication at Warburg Dillon Read. "An open industry standard for the use of XML technology will allow brokers to deliver to clients tailored, relevant research content in a highly manageable, accessible and usable form."

The approach espoused by IRML.org is intended to be beneficial to both producers and consumers of Investment Research. These benefits include lower distribution and production costs, expanded flexibility within firms' IT infrastructures and powerful tools for retrieval and manipulation of information components. With XML standards in place for Investment Research, firms will be able to create on-demand, decision critical research, tailored to each prospective client, enabling enhanced, targeted client communications.

IRML.org will present its proposed specification of the IRML(tm) standard as the starting point for the discussion that will lead to the creation of a truly industry owned standard. The initial IRML(tm) schema is the result of many months of development and testing by Multex.com, which utilized over 2 million documents from its data repository in conjunction with community input.

The inaugural meeting will be held in June, in New York City. For more information about the consortium, to become a member, or to pre-register for the inaugural meeting, please visit the organization's Web site at www.irml.org.

About IRML.org

IRML.org is a nonprofit organization established to promote and support the use of XML (eXtensible Markup Language) within the financial industry. The IRML(tm) standard establishes an open architecture platform that will benefit all facets of the industry (business-to-business, business-to-consumer, sell-side firms, buy-side firms, corporations and individuals).

IRML.org aims to promote XML technologies within the framework of current financial information technology (IT) infrastructures, encouraging firms to adopt leading edge technology in anticipation of the next generation of the World Wide Web. The standard aims to provide a logical, manageable and coherent structure for use by the financial community, which offers unique benefits to producers and users of investment research.