NEW YORK and LONDON, March 2, 2005 (PRIMEZONE) -- Thomson Financial, an operating unit of the Thomson Corporation (NYSE:TOC) (TSE:TOC) and leading provider of information and technology solutions to the world-wide financial community, will adopt the recently launched Industry Classification Benchmark (ICB) as its standard classification tool across a range of its global data products and services.
Thomson Financial is the first global data provider to adopt ICB, and it joins stock exchanges, index providers, and publishing and media organizations world-wide to offer its clients access to the market's most innovative and flexible industry classification structure.
Launched in December 2004 by Dow Jones Indexes and FTSE Group, ICB quickly is establishing itself as the market's preferred classification system. It is designed to offer the financial industry a unified and comprehensive means of classifying 40,000 companies and 45,000 securities around the world.
"We have chosen ICB as our classification standard as it represents a truly global solution to our clients' classification needs," said Sarah Dunn, chief content officer at Thomson Financial. "Thomson Financial is committed to helping its clients achieve superior results, and we seek innovative performance tools to help us do that. ICB meets those requirements."
"This is an important strategic step for the development of ICB," said James Cemprola, managing director of ICB. "We are delighted that Thomson Financial has adopted the innovative structure for use throughout the wide range of qualitative and quantitative investment tools that it offers its clients."
More information about the Industry Classification Benchmark is available at www.icbenchmark.com.
Journalists wishing more information should contact: Thomson Financial London: Alex Brog, PR Director - Europe +44 (0) 20 7324 6986 alexander.brog@thomson.com New York: Ayesha Haider, PR Manager +1 646-822-2698 ayesha.haider@thomson.com Dow Jones Indexes New York: Sybille A. Reitz +1-212-597-5735 Karishma Thakkar +1-212-597-5718 Frankfurt: Simona Deckers +49-69-97142894 Nicole Wesch +49-69-97142893 or e-mail pr-indexes@dowjones.com FTSE Group Lynne Sims, FTSE Americas Tel +1 212 641 6168 or e-mail lynne.sims@ftse.com Nicky Gardner/Jo Mayall, FTSE Group Tel +44 207 448 1821 or e-mail media@ftse.com
Notes to Editors
About Thomson Financial
Thomson Financial is a US$1.5 billion provider of information and technology solutions to the worldwide financial community. Through the widest range of products and services in the industry, Thomson Financial helps clients in more than 70 countries make better decisions, be more productive and achieve superior results. Thomson Financial is part of The Thomson Corporation (www.thomson.com), a leading provider of value-added information, software tools and applications to more than 20 million users in the fields of law, tax, accounting, financial services, higher education, reference information, corporate training and assessment, scientific research and healthcare. With revenues of US$7.44 billion, The Thomson Corporation lists its common shares on the New York and Toronto stock exchanges (NYSE:TOC) (TSE:TOC).
About Dow Jones Indexes
Dow Jones Indexes is a premier global provider of investable indexes, including the Dow Jones Averages, the Dow Jones Global Titans 50, the Dow Jones Asian Titans 50, the Dow Jones Sector Titans, the Dow Jones Country Titans Indexes and is co-owner of the Pan-European Dow Jones STOXX Indexes. Dow Jones Indexes is part of Dow Jones & Company, which publishes the world's most vital business and financial news and information.
In addition to Dow Jones Indexes, Dow Jones & Company (NYSE:DJ) (dowjones.com) publishes The Wall Street Journal and its international and online editions, Barron's and the Far Eastern Economic Review, Dow Jones Newswires, MarketWatch and the Ottaway group of community newspapers. Dow Jones is co-owner with Reuters Group of Factiva, with Hearst of SmartMoney and with NBC Universal of the CNBC television operations in Asia and Europe. Dow Jones also provides news content to CNBC and radio stations in the U.S.
The Dow Jones Indexes logo can be found at http://www.primezone.com/newsroom/prs/?pkgid=1289
About FTSE Group
FTSE Group is a world-leader in the creation and management of indices. With offices in London, Frankfurt, Hong Kong, Madrid, Paris, New York, San Francisco, and Tokyo, FTSE Group services clients in 77 countries worldwide. It calculates and manages the FTSE Global Equity Index series, which includes world-recognised indices ranging from the FTSE All-World Index, the FTSE4Good series and the FTSEurofirst Index series, as well as domestic indices such as the prestigious FTSE 100. The company has collaborative arrangements with the Athens, AMEX, Cyprus, Euronext, Johannesburg London, Madrid, NASDAQ and Taiwan exchanges, as well as Nomura Securities, Hang Seng and Xinhua Finance of China,
FTSE indices are used extensively by investors world-wide for investment analysis, performance measurement, asset allocation, portfolio hedging and for creating a wide range of index tracking funds. Independent committees of senior fund managers, derivatives experts, actuaries and other experienced practitioners review all changes to the indices to ensure that they are made objectively and without bias. Real-time FTSE indices are calculated on systems managed by Reuters. Prices and FX rates used are supplied by Reuters.