UK financial publisher Hemmington Scott Ltd says it plans to spin off its web site business into a separate subscription-free internet service provider prior to seeking a Stock market listing. By spinning off the new company Hemmington said it hopes that both parent and child will be better able to focus on their respective core competencies. The firm would not speculate about when or on what exchange it will float its ISP.
Hemscott.net will become a virtual ISP using infrastructure from MCI Worldcom Inc subsidiary UUNet. It will offer its 12,000 pages of financial information about London-listed companies free to users of its service, which will net the ISP a small percentage of the per-minute charge users pay to dialup. But 40% shareholder and founder Peter Scott says that interconnection charges are not going to be the company’s core revenue stream. It will instead focus on subscription fees from non-members and advertising which Scott said will be performed in a more discreet fashion than the usual banner ads. It has also announced that it will reduce its subscription charge to non-members to 5 pounds ($7.88) per month.
The ISP portal includes live stock prices and a news feed supplied by AFX News, a joint venture of Agence France-Presse and the Financial Times newspaper. The company will hope to exploit the explosion of online financial services predicted by the growth of the internet in the UK. Yesterday The eXchange Holdings Plc, an infomediary of online financial services also announced its intention to float on the London Stock Exchange for around 384m pounds ($602m).
