Dow Jones is quitting the financial-data-delivery game, unloading its Markets unit to Bridge Information Systems Inc. for US$510 million. The company bought the service, then known as Telerate, a decade ago for $1.6 billion.
Bridge, which gobbled up Knight-Ridder's similar service in 1996, has named its combined service Bridge Telerate and is suddenly the Number Two provider of finance data, ahead of Bloomberg but trailing Reuters.
Dow Jones, publisher of The Wall Street Journal, intends to refocus efforts on its news business.
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__Metromail sale under fire: __The proposed sale of Metromail, a collector of data on individual spending habits, to British retailer Great Universal Stores PLC drew legal fire Tuesday as American Business Information filed suit to block the merger, while making its own bid. American Business, a provider of marketing, direct mail, and data processing services, made a US$33 per share offer, amounting to around $850 million. Its suit alleges that Metromail company officials did not hold a fair auction before agreeing to the Great Universal offer and therefore breached fiduciary responsibility to Metromail shareholders. That would include American Business, which owns approximately 1 million Metromail shares.
"Effectively, the GUS-Metromail merger agreement ends an auction for Metromail before it could even begin," said Vinod Gupta, chairman of American Business. "As a shareholder, we find this pretty outrageous."
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Buy now, worry later: A new study says US school districts are cobbling together technology programs every which way, but haven't established long-term sources for funding and are fearful of what might happen down the road.
A Government Accounting Office study of five varied school systems found that ballyhooed partnerships with business constitute less than 3 percent of tech-program funding. Instead, most of the bucks for such programs come from "special local bonds and levies, state assistance, and federal grants to purchase and replace equipment."
None of the districts had snared a more stable long-term money pipeline - through their operating budgets or their state's education plan, for example - so maintenance and upgrading are big concerns.
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Bad news for Bay Networks: Bay Networks says it expects its fiscal third-quarter revenue to be about 10 percent below the second quarter's US$645 million because of weak product demand. The computer networking gear maker also said it expects net operating income to be less than the second quarter's, although it still expects to report a profit for the third quarter. Bay Networks did not specify why product demand is lower than expected but said several technology shifts in the market were factors.
Reuters contributed to this report.
