London, 17 March - Reuters has acquired Citywatch, a leading supplier of UK equity ownership information. Citywatch specialises in monitoring and measuring UK equity ownership.

Citywatch, which is London based, was formed in 1993 and has 36 employees. The company's net assets at 31 December 1997 were £204,000.

Citywatch services are widely used by the financial community including corporate finance, investor relations and institutional sales departments as well as fund managers.

The product range includes the fund manager database which contains details of the shareholdings of fund managers in the top 2,300 UK quoted companies. Citywatch information is used to analyse movements in the ownership of securities and allows analysis of investment trends.

On 23 February 1998 Reuters started providing Reuters Citywatch, a shareholder analysis service, for clients who subscribe to the Equity Focus Plus, Markets 3000 and Securities 3000 services in the UK and Ireland. Based on Citywatch's database, it enables clients to access the names of institutional shareholders and their holdings, both in terms of number of shares and percentages, of all fully listed UK companies and 50 per cent of AIM listed stocks.

Jean-Claude Marchand, Executive Director, Reuters Group PLC, said: "Citywatch has established a market leading position in the investment community and we believe it represents another key component in our continuing efforts to provide services of excellence to the investment community."

Citywatch's Managing Director, Mark O'Hare, said: "Citywatch's customers place a high value on timely, accurate data and are becoming increasingly sophisticated in their information requirements. The deal with Reuters brings tremendous opportunities to enhance and expand the service we offer and to develop new areas of value-added information."

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