Morningstar Acquisition Expands Its Global Presence

Independent investment research provider Morningstar Inc. announced this week that it plans to acquire the Hemscott data, media and investor relations web site businesses from Ipreo for $51.6 million in cash. The deal is expected to close in January.

Morningstar will gain ownership of several successful Hemscott business units. One is Hemscott Data, which provides financial information in nearly all public companies in the U.S., Canada and the U.K. Hemscott's global database contains information on more than 19,500 public companies, 170,000 directors and officers, and earnings estimates from 68 London securities firms. Hemscott Data currently has 350 clients, such as accounting and law firms, brokerages, investment banks, research firms, financial web sites and public companies. Company data these clients receive includes executive and director information (including biographies and compensation), historical pricing and volume data on stocks.

Hemscott Data also houses Hemscott Guru, a business-to-business online research tool that contains up-to-date financial information and directors' biographies on more than 2,500 U.K.-quoted companies and 400,000 private companies. Also under the Hemscott Data umbrella is Hemscott Adviser Rankings Guide, which is a listing of more than 1,800 leading providers of professional services to all U.K. and Irish-registered companies listed on the London Stock Exchange.

Other Hemscott Data properties include Hemscott India, which operates a data collection center in India and Hemscott.com, a free investment research web site in the U.K. The fee site has more than 320,000 unique users a month, while its Hemscott Premium and Premium Plus subscription services boast more than 2,000 subscribers. Another property is Hemscott IR, which designs, builds, hosts and maintains investor relations pages for the corporate web sites of more than 540 companies.

In a press release announcing the deal, Joe Mansueto, chairman and CEO of Morningstar, explained that the acquisition of Hemscott would help the company achieve its goal of creating a global equity database and expand its presence beyond the U.S. Hemscott will also enable Morningstar to enter the Indian market, where it didn't previously have a presence.

For business information providers today, there is no choice about which geographic regions they cover. They must provide coverage for all. Business information customers, those seeking investment information in this case, don't want to be limited by borders; their businesses certainly aren't. So it is absolutely necessary for Morningstar, and companies like it, to seek out deals such as the Hemscott acquisition to bolster offerings on a more global scale. This deal is particular impressive because of the breath of content and services Hemscott offers. Morningstar can definitely hit the ground running with this deal in the New Year. Perhaps it will work to bolster Hemscott's content going forward, but it seems so complete now that any content improvements won't need to happen any time soon.

Contexo Media Expands Offerings with Dorland Buy

Business-to-business information provider Contexo Media last month announced that it acquired most of the assets of Dorland Healthcare Information (DHI). DHI serves the professional healthcare case management market with a product suite of e-newsletters, magazines, directories, continuing education programs and Internet offerings. Its leading publications include Case In Point magazine and the Case Management Resource Guide, both of which are official publications of the Case Management Society of America. DHI's customer base consists of healthcare professionals, such as doctors, pharmacists, nurses, case managers and other care coordination team members.

Case In Point addresses cutting-edge clinical topics and keeps readers up-to-date with coverage of the most recent issues, trends and national news. Case Management Resource Guide provides case managers with information that helps them serve their patients. The online version (www.cmrg.com) boasts thousands of users each month and both the print and online products feature more than 130,000 product and service listings. The guide is distributed to more than 20,000 case managers and case coordinators.

Contexo Media, which prior to the acquisition focused its offerings on health and human services professionals, plans to use DHI as entry into the healthcare case management market.

When trying to enter new markets, a smart strategy is always to acquire a prominent player in the process. Building on one company's success is certainly easier than establishing a market presence from scratch. Contexo Media certainly picked the right way to enter the case management market. Dorland has a strong history; one that Contexo Media will undoubtedly continue to build upon.

Overall, the Dorland properties are a nice complement to Contexo Media's current stable of content geared toward health and human services professionals. That stable includes information in a wide range of formats (from print books to online tools and blogs). While Dorland already publishes in these formats, look for Contexo Media to continue to build out Dorland's content and delivery methods even further.

Partnership Yields More Complete Doctor Directory

Vitals.com, an online doctor evaluation service run by MDX Medical, has expanded its partnership with Castle Connolly Medical Ltd., which is known for its "Top Doctor" ratings. Vitals.com will incorporate the "Top Doctor" ratings into its website. It will lend its analytic tools to Castle Connolly's survey methodology to expand the "Top Doctor" ratings to more than 100 markets worldwide.

Vitals.com is now able to offer patients a source for empirical quality measures, independent doctor reviews, peer evaluations and patient feedback as they search for an appropriate doctor. Vitals.com has assembled a directory of more than 500,000 U.S. doctors in a free site by combining multiple databases with other information repositories, search and comparison technologies and a patient feedback mechanism.

Users can search the Vitals.com site to find a doctor based on a symptom or category of a specialist or they can conduct a search for their own current doctors' listings. The listings include content such as doctor background information (medical education and training), hospital affiliation, sanctions, volume of procedures, as well as consumer reviews and comments.

Castle Connelly publishes the America's Top Doctors guide and other Top Doctors guides. The company's national annual survey identifies top doctors based on peer nominations and research conducted by their physician-led research team. The doctors are then profiled in Castle Connelly publications.

Separate, these two entities seem to provide extremely comprehensive services to a consumer customer base that they share. Together, they have the potential to create even more robust offerings. Their collaboration will likely increase both organizations' profiles and help make them the go-to source for consumers seeking a complete look at potential physicians. It's definitely a smart move as consumers continue to take a very active role in their healthcare solutions.

GuideStar Feature Facilitates Charitable Donations

Non-profit information provider GuideStar has added an online donation function to its web site. Now, visitors can research charities and then donate to them--all on the GuideStar site (www.guidestar.org).

Visitors don't have to register to take advantage of this new feature by GuideStar, which offers information on the programs and finances of more than 1.7 million IRS-recognized non-profit organizations.

If we were looking for a great holiday-themed news brief for our industry, I think we've found it here. With the spirit of giving that emerges at this time every year, this is the perfect time to launch such a service. It's practically a given that it will get much use this month.

Overall, though, it makes perfect sense for GuideStar to provide this new feature. The Web has caused the consumer's preference for one-stop shopping to increase. If given the choice to locate a worthwhile charity and donate with just a couple of mouse clicks (on the same site), many consumers would likely want to express their generosity in this manner.

Generate Launches New Technology Product

Generate this month launched gClick Enterprise, a technology that enables employees to access business information from any web page and integrate it with data and applications behind the corporate firewall.

gClick Enterprise also scans information applications, such as Factiva, OneSource and Hoovers along with customer relationship management (CRM) and sales force automation (SFA) applications, such as Salesforce.com, SAP and Siebel to provide users one customized view of aggregated business intelligence. This includes how those users connect to each company and executive through relationship-mapping (social networking) technology.

The application is a browser-based plug-in that allows users to scan web pages while simultaneously searching internal information and applications while it yields relevant results. The results page returns a collection of business information in one summary window. That information includes in-depth company and management profiles; relationship maps showing how each employee and his organization connect to these companies and executives via three degrees of separation; recent, relevant news and events about the companies and executives referenced; and results from internal information licenses and CRM/SFA data.

This new application certainly has a lot of potential. Employee productivity is such a huge issue, especially at this time of year when companies are likely taking a closer look at headcount for the New Year. Productivity is so greatly tied to a company's bottom line that any tools that will improve workers' efficiencies will be welcomed in today's extremely competitive marketplace. That's why Generate's new tool has a real chance at success.