Publishign company Thomson Corp. is buying the AFX News Ltd. business news agency from Agence France-Presse for an undisclosed amount, the companies said on Wednesday. This Reuters story said that the price is less than $20 million.
London-based AFX is a European news service that provides business, financial and economic news.
Thomson plans to ‘invest appropriately to further develop a competitive, differentiated news service in Europe,’ it said in a statement. ‘The company will also leverage synergies across AFX and Thomson Financial’s existing news offerings to create a tailored, European real-time financial news service.’
The deal is expected to close in July, subject to a regulatory review in Germany.
Thomson, which sells its products and related services to a variety of industries, from financial to health care, is based in Toronto but has most of its operations in Stamford, Conn.
Donal Smith, president of Thomson Financial in Europe and Asia, said in the release that the acquisition “builds on the success of Thomson Financial News in North America, which is already delivered to over 10,000 desktops. We understand how a targeted financial news service provides our clients with a strategic advantage when tailored to their needs and contextually integrated with our market-leading proprietary content and applications.”
Both Thomson and AFX compete with Reuters Group Plc, Bloomberg News and Dow Jones Newswire.
Read the news release here.
