Dow Jones buys rest of Factiva from Reuters for $160 million

Dow Jones & Co., the parent of The Wall Street Journal and Barron’s, agreed to purchase the 50 percent stake in Factiva that it doesn’t already own from rival Reuters for $160 million, according to published reports.

The Associated Press reported, “Founded in 1999 as a 50-50 joint venture between Dow Jones and Reuters to combine the data retrieval and archival businesses of Dow Jones in North America and Reuters in Europe and Asia, Factiva provides global business content, research products and services to businesses in the finance, corporate, professional services and government sectors. New York-based Factiva has 1.6 million paying subscribers and about 750 employees across 33 locations worldwide.”

The deal is part of a plan by Dow Jones to focus more of its operations on non-print businesses, said CEO Richard Zannino in a statement.

Read more here.

Meanwhile, Dow Jones also reported a 5.9 percent decrease in advertising revenue in September at the Journal, but advertising revenue at Barron’s increased 20 percent.

At the Journal, the technology advertising category fell 14.2% “due to decreases in technology professional services, personal computers and hardware advertising, partially offset by an increase in office products advertising. The Journal’s classified advertising category linage decreased 13.1% due to a decline in real estate advertising. This represents the first decline in classified advertising volume since January 2005.”

Read more about the ad results here.