New IR service for Asian companies

First Call - part of the Thomson Financial Corporate Group - and PR Newswire Asia have linked up to create a new service called PR Newswire-First Call wire. This is a distribution system for disseminating Asian corporate IR releases. The service will allow Asian listed companies to send their news and information to over 400,000 investment professionals around the world.

"As the Asian markets continue to open up for foreign investment, Asian public companies will have increasing need for fast, cost-effective dissemination of their market-critical news to the group of investment professionals represented by Thomson's First Call network," says Charlie Morin, PR Newswire's chief executive officer, commenting on the tie-up.

The new alliance is an extension of an existing service, which has been available to US and European companies since November 2001. "Our strategic alliance has been extremely successful in the US and Europe and we anticipate it will be another major milestone for our penetration in Asia," comments Eric Frank, executive vice president of Thomson Financial's Corporate Group.