London and Düsseldorf - Reuters, the global news and information organisation, and Verlagsgruppe Handelsblatt, the business media group which publishes Germany's leading financial newspaper, today announced a joint venture to launch a personal finance website for Germany's online private investors. The new venture, which is intended to go live later this year, will focus on producing rapid commentary on breaking financial news and analysis of company and market trends. It will be aimed at helping users take decisions on the management of their investment portfolios.

Based in Frankfurt, the new service will be run a by a team of journalists and analysts considered leaders in their field, supported by external contributors. In addition to commenting on major quoted stocks, the website will focus strongly on the Neuer Markt and German IPOs. It will carry real-time news and quotes from domestic and foreign exchanges and will include functionality to enable users to manage their private portfolios. There will, in addition, be multiple links back to the databases, tools and background data of Handelsblatt and Reuters web properties. These include, on the Handelsblatt side, the Handelsblatt, WirtschaftsWoche, DM and DIE Teleboerse websites. Reuters will include access to the Reuters portal, information and analysis on managed funds from its Lipper subsidiary and links to the Multex Investor Europe personal finance portal, a joint venture between Reuters and Multex.com.

The personal finance website marks the first co-operative venture between Reuters and the Handelsblatt Group. The two organisations are looking at other areas for possible partnership in the future. The Venture will be owned 50:50 by its two parents and profits and investment will be equally divided. Revenues will be derived from advertising, sponsorship, syndication and transactions. Mark Wood, Managing Director, Reuters Content Partners, and Dr Heinz-Werner Nienstedt, Chief Executive of the Handelsblatt Group, will alternate as chairmen.

With over a million active users accessing online brokerages, Germany is Europe's biggest online investor market and has shown the fastest growth over the past year. With the accelerating use of online banking, this trend is expected to continue. The website's target of online users interested in personal finance is estimated to currently number some five million. This is expected to grow to more than nine million in the next five years.

Dr Heinz-Werner Nienstedt, Chief Executive of the Handelsblatt Group, said: "This venture will have the backing of two of the most authoritative financial news organisations in Germany. We will establish it quickly as a primary and unmatched source of near-time comment and guidance on developments in the German and international financial markets."

Mark Wood, Managing Director, Reuters Content Partners, said: "There is a major opportunity in the German-speaking online investor market for fast and reliable analysis on top of the breaking news. This latest venture reflects Reuters commitment to make financial markets work on the Internet and is in line with our commitment made in February to accelerate the use of Internet technologies and to develop new products for the retail and personal finance markets."

The completion of the transaction is subject to approval by anti-trust and regulatory authorities and the completion of a series of commercial agreements with the parent companies. The name of the new venture and the identity of key staff will be announced shortly.

Hawkpoint Partners, an independent corporate finance firm, have advised Reuters during this transaction

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Contacts:

Reuters
Mark Wood
Managing Director, Reuters Content Partners
Tel: 020 7542 7901
E-mail: mark.wood@reuters.com

Peter.V.Thomas
Director, Media Relations
Tel: 020 7542 4890
E-mail: peter.v.thomas@reuters.com

Geoff Wicks
Director, Corporate Relations
Tel: 020 7542 8666
E-mail: geoff.wicks@reuters.com

Verlagsgruppe Handelsblatt GmbH

Beate Lehmann
PR and Press Department
Tel 49 0211 887 1106
E-mail: b.lehmann@vhb.de

Note to editors:

Reuters (www.reuters.com) has four main operating units: Reuters Information, Reuters Trading Solutions, Reuterspace and Instinet. Reuters Information supplies the global financial markets and news media with the widest range of information and news products. It and other parts of the Group provide news and information to over 900 internet websites reaching an estimated 40 million viewers and generating approximately 140 million pageviews per month. Reuters Trading Solutions provides global solutions and technologies for the financial markets including enterprise-wide integration, market information and data distribution, equity and foreign exchange transactions as well as risk and trade management. It also supplies technologies and portal capabilities for clients to supply their retail customers. Reuterspace concentrates on services in the business-to-business, consumer finance and media markets. Reuters is the world's largest international news and television agency with 2,100 journalists, photographers and camera operators in 184 bureaux serving 154 countries. News is gathered and edited in 23 languages. Instinet, an independently managed subsidiary of Reuters, is the world's largest electronic agency brokerage firm. It covers the equities and fixed income markets. On 31 December 1999, the Group employed 16,546 staff in 212 cities in 97 countries.

Verlagsgruppe Handelsblatt GmbH

Verlagsgruppe Handelsblatt, a subsidiary of the Georg von Holtzbrinck Publishing Group, is Germany's leading media group for business and finance. For over 50 years now it has been in the business of producing newspapers and periodicals, trade magazines, books, television and electronic services. The Handelsblatt newspaper is the largest German-language business and financial daily. With a circulation of 170,000 it reaches 560,000 readers. Within the framework of a strategic alliance, a cross stakeholding was agreed between the Handelsblatt's publishers and the Wall Street Journal Europe's publishers Dow Jones. Verlagsgruppe Handelsblatt owns 49 percent of the Wall Street Journal Europe, while the Journal's publishers, Dow Jones, owns 22 percent of Handelsblatt. The Verlagsgruppe Handelsblatt also publishes such leading business magazines as Wirtschafts Woche, DM and Telebörse plus 30 trade magazines. Added to that the Verlagsgruppe Handelsblatt has stakes in a number of prestigious publishing houses including Economia S.A., the Czech business publishers, the German news and business tv channel n-tv, VDI-Nachrichten, the engineering weekly for mechanical and civil engineers and the German business news agency Vereinigte Wirtschaftsdienste (vwd). Verlagsgruppe Handelsblatt has announced to consolidate its broad online activities and participation in that field in the "Handelsblatt Online AG", a 100 percent affiliate of Verlagsgruppe Handelsblatt.

This new release may be deemed to include forward-looking statements relating to Reuters within the meaning of Section 27A of the US Securities Act of 1933 and Section 21E of the US Securities Act of 1934. Certain important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those disclosed in such forward-looking statements are described in Reuters 1999 Annual Report to Shareholders under the heading "Operating and Financial Review – Cautionary Statements". Copies of the Annual Report are available on request for Reuters Group PLC, 85 Fleet Street, London EC4P 4AJ.

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