Primark Corp, the Waltham, Massachusetts company that bought share information service operator Datastream International Inc has ambitions to help Dow Jones & Co in that company’s war of attrition with Reuters Holdings Plc and has bought another London business, Topic screen operator ICV Ltd, which provides real-time quote information and news within the UK. The deal will cost Primark 2.2 million shares worth almost $61m, plus about $37.3m in cash and $8.3m in notes. It simultaneously formed a joint venture with Dow Jones & Co to develop a real-time equities news information service in the UK and Ireland, to be called Primark/Dow Jones Equities Service and set for release in the first half of 1997. The new service will be integrated with expanded Dow Jones news and the news services produced through its partnership with the Associated Press, and will offer global financial data, including quotes, earnings estimates, and historical economic and financial information, with the target audience being equity traders and investors. The information will be available through workstations, digital data feeds and trading room systems, including those of Dow Jones Telerate. In future, the pair plans to tailor the product for distribution in continental Europe and other parts of the world. Reuters responded by saying that the company welcomed competition, and warned that Datastream, Telerate and ICV were already competitors, so it saw little new to fear as it already invested 200m British pounds a year to keep ahead of the pack. ICV bought the Stock Exchange’s Topic information service two years ago. It supplies instant information on company news and share prices through 9,000 screens in dealers and institutions’ offices. Primark also owns the IBES agency which reports on companies’ profits; financial information accounts for a third of its $750m annual sales. Dow Jones said it would add editorial staff in London to support the new financial data joint venture: the the ICV news staff of around 20 will join Dow Jones’ London newsroom and we will be adding staff on top of that. Dow Jones in London says it now has 80 news staff, although this would rise to close to 100 early next year as editing staff move from New York in a previously-planned development.
