direct: Acquisition of Hugin by Euronext finalized, Hugin now part of Euronext

19 December 2006 - Euronext and Hugin ASA are pleased to announce the completion of Euronext´s acquisition of Hugin ASA, now a wholly owned subsidiary of Euronext. Hugin is Europe´s leading provider of innovative solutions for connecting communication professionals with their target audiences.

Euronext expanded into the corporate news distribution market in March this year when it acquired Companynews. Hugin and Companynews are now to be integrated to create an independent entity with its own management team led by Tor Baekkelund, the current CEO of Hugin. The new company will be in a better position to take advantage of the new European Transparency Directive, set to come into effect in January 2007. It will benefit from the new financial reporting requirements laid down in the Transparency Directive and the need for more targeted distribution.

Clients of the new company will benefit from enhanced services including the combination of the strong distribution networks of Hugin and Companynews, strengthening of existing products, and faster development and delivery of new products. This will give Hugin and Companynews clients more services to choose from. The new company will also be in a better position to deliver services tailored to specific client needs. Hugin´s clients are mainly based in northern Europe, while Companynews has built up strong positions in France, Italy and Spain.

"Integrating Hugin with Companynews will give us a very strong position in corporate news distribution. This will provide the Information Services SBU with an additional source of income and strengthen our strategy of developing services for our listed companies," said André Went, managing director of Euronext´s Information Services SBU.

"Euronext´s commitment to the industry and the strategic fit with Companynews will strengthen our ability to deliver innovative products and services to all clients in the future, says Tor Baekkelund, CEO of the new company. "They are the one´s that will really gain from this, as we intend to bring more products to the market faster with the aim to solve their future needs. In fact, we are well underway as new services will be launched in the beginning of next year," Tor Bækkelund continues. "I am delighted to join Euronext; it is good for our clients, our company and our employees."

Olivier Mégean, CEO of Companynews said, "We are delighted that we will be continuing our efforts to develop the market for news distribution with Hugin, which has a very good product offering that is highly complementary to ours, and operates in a different geographic area."

Hugin
The Hugin Group is Europe´s leading provider of innovative solutions for connecting communication professionals with their target audiences. Hugin was founded in 1995, and is now one of Europe´s leading distributors of unedited corporate information.

Hugin currently distributes press releases on behalf of over 1,200 companies throughout 20 European countries and employs around 86 people in 9 countries (Belgium, Denmark, Finland, Germany, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland and the UK).

Hugin´s core business is offering real-time quality information by providing communication professionals with highly innovative straight-through-processing solutions for the delivery of unedited facts to their target audiences. Following its merger with Directnews in 2005, Hugin now offers tailored research and management of media data as well as press release distribution to targeted media worldwide.

Hugin offers investors and journalist´s real-time news through its internet portal at http://www.huginonline.com/ and via free email subscription. Online portals, data vendors and newswires provide real-time feeds of all our news.

For more information go to http://www.hugingroup.com

Euronext, the first pan-European exchange, results from the September 2000 merger of equity and derivatives markets in Amsterdam, Brussels and Paris. BVLP, the Portuguese exchange and LIFFE, the international derivatives exchange, joined Euronext in 2002. Euronext offers services that include listing of financial instruments, trading in securities and derivatives, data dissemination and IT support. Measured by value and number of trades processed through its central order book, Euronext is the largest cash equity market in Europe. Euronext.liffe, the derivatives business of Euronext, is Europe´s second largest derivatives exchange by volume and the value of listings.

Euronext Information Services
Euronext´s Information Services SBU is responsible for operating Euronext´s data feeds and providing a wide range of data products. It distributes and sells market data, such as price, transaction and order book data, and is responsible for compiling and managing Euronext´s indices through Euronext Indices B.V., a subsidiary of Euronext. During the first nine months of 2006, the Information Services SBU generated total turnover of EUR 82.8 million, an increase of 23% compared with the same period in 2005.

For more information go to www.euronext.com

Further information:

Hugin
Tor Baekkelund, CEO
+47 41 69 52 41

Matthias Erler, Director Media Development & Marketing
+49 89 17 95 92 93

Euronext
Amsterdam
+31 20 5504488

Brussels
+32 2 5091392

Lisbon
+351 217900000

London
+44 20 73792315

Paris
+33 1 49271133

This release was published on openPR.