Reuters, Multex to Create European Investor Portal

Reuters
and Multex.com Tuesday
formed a joint venture to develop an Internet portal for
private investors in Europe.

Each of the two companies will own 50 per cent of
the venture, which they are calling Multex Investor
Europe. It will aim to offer a sophisticated service, complete
with financial decision support tools and broker research,
at private investors online.

The chairman of the new venture will be Isaak Karaev,
chairman and chief executive officer of Multex.com.
Another director from Multex.com and two from Reuters
will form the board, and the company will base its
headquarters in London.

In the United States, Multex.com already runs a highly
successful portal,
multexinvestor.com,
on which the partners will model the European version. It has
over 1.2 million members, and carries half a million
research reports on 15,000 companies from 300 brokerage
firms.

“This joint venture enables Multex.com and Reuters to
combine their respective strengths in building a virtual
financial shopping mall connecting personal investors
and financial service providers,” said Isaak Karaev.

Speaking for Reuters, Director David Ure said that
members of the Multex Investor Europe club would also
be able to join the Reuters portal club.

Over the next two years, experts are predicting that
there will be nearly nine million European investors
managing portfolios of stocks and shares online.