SANTA MONICA, Calif. May 25, 1999 (PRIMEZONE) -- GLOBALNET FINANCIAL.com, Inc. (OTCBB: GLBN), an international multi-media provider of online financial news and information, today announced that an investment consortium consisting of The De Agostini Holding Group, Banca Commerciale Italiana and Investitori Associati ("the Italian Consortium") made a $5.0 million strategic investment in GLBN. The consortium purchased 2.5 million unregistered shares at $2.00 per share representing approximately 4% of Globalnet's current shares outstanding.
De Agostini is a major international publisher with group annual sales of approximately $1.5 billion. Banca Commerciale Italiana is one of Italy's largest banks and is recognized as Italy's leader in international banking. Investitori Associati is the largest leveraged buyout ("LBO") firm in Italy; in November 1997 it led the highly successful LBO of Seat, the Italian yellow page publisher, which at the time was the largest LBO in European history.
GlobalNet and the Italian Consortium have formed a joint venture arrangement for the development of Italia-iNvest.com as a premier financial Web site covering Italy's investment market. The introduction of this site would be the third such Web site that GLBN has developed and introduced in three different countries. Italia-iNvest.com will be modeled after GLBN's UK-iNvest.com and U.S. Web site, MicroCap1000.com, rated by Barron's (11/23/98) as one of the top investment Web sites. It will provide up-to-the-minute market news, stock quotes, commentary, performance charts, and a complete database of publicly traded Italian companies.
"We are pleased to be working with such a distinguished group toward developing Italia-iNvest.com," said Stanley Hollander, President and CEO of GlobalNet. "Their leadership in the Italian financial community, coupled with our Internet financial publishing expertise, gives us the tools and visibility to be the premier financial Web site in Italy. Further, their investment in our company strongly supports GlobalNet's business plan of becoming a worldwide leader in providing financial content and services to online investors."
This investment by the Italian Consortium follows a $15.0 million strategic investment by Freeserve, Ltd., the UK's largest Internet Service Provider ("ISP"). Proceeds of the investments will be used to implement GLBN's strategy of building market-specific financial Web sites throughout the world in alliance with key industry players in the various markets, as well as to continue building its online trading business. Last month, the Company successfully launched UK-iNvest.com in alliance with Freeserve, Ltd. UK-iNvest.com (www.ukinvest.com) is the exclusive provider of financial information on Freeserve, the U.K.'s largest growing ISP with more than 1.1 million active accounts.
"The Italian market is a further platform into Europe," said Hollander, "a market that exceeds the U.S. in terms of overall population and has a greater potential to attract subscribers and online traders to our financial sites."
GlobalNet Financial.com, Inc. is publicly traded in the United States under the symbol "GLBN." GlobalNet's U.S. Web site MicroCap1000.com (www.microcap1000.com) was launched in October 1998 and is designed to be the premier source of information on the MicroCap sector, focusing on companies with market capitalization of under $500 million. The site provides comprehensive Internet-based electronic publishing of unique content, including news, analysis, and investment ideas. MicroCap1000.com currently has over 165,000 registered users. Last month, GLBN successfully launched Uk-iNvest.com (www.ukinvest.com) in alliance with Freeserve, Ltd., becoming the exclusive provider of investment information on Freeserve's Money Channel.
In May 1999, the Company entered into an agreement to acquire an equity stake in the online brokerage firm, GRO Corporation. GRO, based in Houston, Tex., is a NASD-licensed broker/dealer that provides on-line Electronic Direct Access Trading (E-DAT) services to institutional and individual investors. Further, during 1999, GlobalNet and its subsidiaries entered into a number of joint ventures, content alliances and advertising agreements. Freeserve, Ltd. invested approximately $15.0 million in exchange for 13% of GLBN. Telescan, Inc. (Nasdaq: TSCN) acquired 9.9% of the then outstanding number of shares of GLBN as a result of a technology license agreement as well as a strategic share exchange. UK-iNvest.com, Ltd. hired 24/7 (Nasdaq: TFSM) as its advertising agency and entered into a co-branding agreement with the Motley Fool UK and TheStreet.com (NASDAQ: TSCM) whereby The Motley Fool UK will provide a broad range of content on UK-iNvest.com. Further, MicroCap1000.com, Ltd. teamed up with Lycos (Nasdaq: LCOS) whereby MicroCap1000 will be showcased through advertising within Lycos.com's Money Web Guide.
"Safe Harbor" statement under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Except for historical information, the matters discussed in this news release that may be considered forward-looking statements could be subject to certain risks and uncertainties that could cause the actual results to differ materially from those projected. These include uncertainties in the market, competition, legal, success of marketing efforts and other risks detailed from time to time in the company's SEC reports. The company assumes no obligation to update the information in this release.