THOMSON FINANCIAL COMPLETES PURCHASE OF FIRST CALL; HARCOURT SALE CLEARED.Thomson Financial Thomson Financial A major provider of information, analytical tools, and consulting services to the financial community. The firm, a division of Thomson Corporation, is best known to investors for its First Call segment, which publishes consensus earnings (Boston, MA), a unit of Thomson Corp. (Toronto, ON) has acquired the remaining 48% of shares of First Call Corp. (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 ) it did not already own from eight brokerage firms. No terms were given. First Call was established in 1984 by majority--owner Thomson and the eight brokerage partners, including Credit Suisse The Credit Suisse Group (SWX:CSGN, NYSE: CS) is a financial services company, headquartered in Zürich, Switzerland. It is the second-largest Swiss bank, behind UBS AG. , Salomon Smith Barney Smith Barney is a division of Citigroup Global Capital Markets Inc., a global, full-service financial firm, that provides brokerage, investment banking and asset management services to corporations, governments and individuals around the world. , Morgan Stanley, Deutsche Bank Securities, Merrill Lynch, UBS UBS Union Bank of Switzerland UBS United Bible Societies UBS United Blood Services UBS United Buying Service UBS Used Bookstore UBS University Business Services UBS Universal Building Society (UK) UBS Ulaanbaatar Broadcasting System PaineWebber, Lehman Brothers and Prudential. First Call is a provider of real--time, broker--sourced research, analyst estimates, equity and fixed income ownership information and work flow. Its "First Call Network" allows access to more than six million research documents. Thomson said the company's research services, competitive intelligence product, usage reports, and customized products provide vital links between the institutional buy--side and sell--side worldwide. Thomson Financial president Patrick Tierney said the purchase will allow Thomson to integrate First Call with related Thomson assets, including properties acquired from Primark last year, such as IBES IBES See: Institutional Brokers Estimate System , a unit that also provides earnings forecasts. The purchase "further advances our position as the market leader of providing necessary and critical industry data," Tierney said, and allows Thomson to "leverage all of Thomson Financial's information and technology assets." Thomson said the purchase is part of a development program underway in Thomson Financial's Broker/Fund Management Group. New products and services to be released this summer include Thomson Financial Active Express and Target Web. The former service will offer aggregated content from First Call, IBES, Worldscope and Portia as well as analytical tools for money managers. Target Web is being designed to help brokers more accurately target the distribution of their research to the worldwide money management community. In related news, the U.S. Department of Justice has cleared Thomson's proposed $2.06 billion acquisition of select Harcourt General businesses from Reed Elsevier. The clearance is contingent on Thomson's sale of certain overlapping products and services resulting from the acquisition, including certain college textbook products and Assessment Systems Inc., a competitior of Thomson's Prometric Inc. unit. Thomson said the assets to be sold represent less than 1% of its total 2001 pro forma As a matter of form or for the sake of form. Used to describe accounting, financial, and other statements or conclusions based upon assumed or anticipated facts. The phrase pro forma revenues. |
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