London - Reuters today launched its first real-time news and information product delivered and supported entirely on the public Internet.

Reuters Inform is the Group's umbrella name for this range of e-commerce products. The first modules are targeted at the global agrimarkets and the North American power market. Both modules comprise comprehensive market prices, breaking news, charts, weather maps and customer bulletin boards.

Further product modules for the commodities and energy markets are currently scheduled for the coming months.

Reuters Inform is a first step in the Group's drive to deliver its real-time information products more cost effectively to certain market segments using Internet technology and an e-commerce business model. The Internet is ideally suited to the needs of smaller and geographically dispersed markets throughout the world.

Potential customers for the North American power and agrimarkets products include farmers, agricultural co-operatives, food processors, traders, utilities, and other participants in the electricity and gas markets.

Reuters Inform offers significantly lower delivery and administrative costs, online customer support, easy product upgrades and direct billing by credit card. Customers will be able to sign up for a 14-day free trial online, download the product themselves and begin using it immediately.

John Parcell, chief executive Reuters Information, commented: "This is our first move into Internet e-commerce direct to the user. These products will be easy to use and affordable. They will help large numbers of market professionals to take better business decisions. At the same time, Reuters will be able to reach this much wider audience economically and in a user-friendly way. We will continue to build our e-commerce infrastructure and to address the ever growing requirements for information across all our markets."

The service can be accessed at www.reutersinform.com/?prgen1

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Contact:

Martin Wadhwani Tel; 0171 542 6559
Global Head of Commodities and Energy, Reuters Information
martin.wadhwani@reuters.com

Geoff Wicks Tel: 0171 542 8666
Director, Corporate Relations
geoff.wicks@reuters com

Adrian Duffield Tel: 0171 542 4728
Manager, Group Corporate Relations
adrian.duffield@reuters.com

Note to editors

More information on the Reuters Inform product range is available at www.reutersinform.com, where a 14-day free trial is available and an online animated product demonstration can be viewed.

Reuters supplies the global financial markets and the news media with the widest range of information and news products including real-time financial data, collective investment data, numerical, textual, historical and graphical databases plus news, graphics, news video, and news pictures, reaching over 485,000 users located in 57,900 organisations. Reuters designs and installs enterprise-wide information management and risk management systems for the financial markets as well as providing equity and foreign exchange transaction systems. It extensively uses internet technologies for wider distribution of information and news. The Group employed 16,938 staff in 218 cities in 96 countries at 31 December 1998.

Reuters is the world's largest news and television agency with 2,072 journalists, photographers and camera operators in 182 bureaux serving 157 countries. News is published in 23 languages.

For more details see www.reuters.com/aboutreuters.

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