Seven major investment banks Tuesday announced plans to jointly build a
global financial information portal.
TheMarkets.com is being
established by Goldman Sachs Group
, Merrill Lynch
, Morgan Stanley Dean Witter
, Salomon Barney Smith
, Credit Suisse First Boston
, Deutsche Bank
Alex.Brown and UBS Warburg
.
The portal, which is expected to launch during the fourth quarter of this
year, aims to be an information-rich destination for institutional investors
by offering commingled equity research, new issue information, news, market
data and direct access to the proprietary Web sites of the participants.
Multex.com, a leading financial
emarketplace, has inked a multi-year, multimillion dollar contract to serve
as the core technology platform and application service provider.
According to James Tousignant, president of Multiplex , the company’s technology will enhance the portal’s offerings
in many ways. “In addition to providing a calendar of equity new issue
information, comprehensive personalization tools will permit folio managers,
analysts and other clients to organize, prioritize and filer the vast amount
of financial information they receive daily,” he said.
This includes summary views of proprietary content that will be provided
on a company-by-company basis, market news and data that will allow the
portal to provide trading and new histories when research has been published
and proprietary research that will be augmented with proprietary analytics
and multimedia content.
Multex plans to take a small, minority equity in the venture. Dually,
TheMarkets.com, which is structured as a limited liability company, plans to
take less than a 1 percent stake in Multex.com’s outstanding stock. Terms of
the investment were not disclosed.