IFN Announces Instant News Service; First Fully Automated Real-Time Newsfeed; ILX to Become First Distributor

Business Wire, March 18, 1997

NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--March 18, 1997 --

Service Uses Artificial Intelligence to Turn SEC Filings into News Items

Internet Financial Network, Inc. (http://www.ifn.com) announced today the early April launch of an automated financial news service. Instant News(TM) extracts key information from SEC filings. It then distributes a newsfeed of that information along with plain English headlines seconds after the filings reach the SEC. ILX, a division of Thompson Financial Services, has agreed to become the first distributor of the newsfeed, which also will be available on IFN's own EdgarWatch(TM) platform.

"Instant News re-defines the meaning of real-time news," said Clifford Boro, IFN's president and CEO. "It automatically performs the tasks of excerpting, condensing and distributing the often market sensitive information contained in SEC EDGAR filings -- tasks that until now have required intensive involvement by journalists. He noted that a small news staff will complement Instant News with "value-added pursuit of filing information and oversight."

Mr. Boro added: "In a nutshell, Instant News harnesses IFN's proprietary form of artificial intelligence for use in financial news gathering and instantly transmits it to our customers -- long before the market has a chance to react. It is the most exciting development in our company's history and we believe it is one of the most important advances ever in the delivery of market-sensitive financial information," he said. The service is aimed at traders and brokers who do not have the time to delve through lengthy documents to assess the market sensitivity of the information they contain. Instant News will be the fastest source of key information on such filings as tender and exchange offers, 13-D filings, contested proxies, auditor changes and other market moving events, Mr. Boro said.

When such influential investors or arbitrageurs as Warren Buffet, George Soros or Carl Icahn buy or sell large positions of stock, they often must file a Form 13-D with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Virtually all such filings are now delivered electronically through the SEC's EDGAR system, and a typical EDGAR monitoring service will alert customers about who made filings and what type of forms they filed (e.g., "1/13/97 CARL ICAHN FORM 13-D." Customer must then retrieve the entire filing document electronically to learn more and several types of filings can run to hundreds of pages.

Instant News, is designed to short-cut the process. The above example in the Instant News format might read: "1/13/97 - Carl Icahn files 13-D to acquire 12% of TWA Corporation." The Instant News customer then retrieves a two-page summary of key excepts from the filing.

"The majority of public company filings never make the financial news wires," Mr. Boro said. "But Instant News does not discriminate between large and small companies. If a company is public, we cover its filing news for its shareholders and potential investors." He noted that the Instant News stories will be indexed to allow customers to filter the output to receive only stories on those companies, industries, or categories of events, that they wish to follow. This is important since there can be as many as 6,500 EDGAR filings a day. Filters include ticker symbol, exchange, industry and event codes.

"We have been searching for the right EDGAR solution for some time now," said Bernard Weinstein, CEO of ILX. "We believe Instant News provides that solution for our customers. And Instant News' low monthly terminal fee should receive an enthusiastic response," Mr. Weinstein added.

ILX, which has consulted with IFN on the design of Instant News since development work began in July of 1996, will offer the service to all of its 70,000 terminals on a 30-day free trial basis. IFN also has reached agreement with Data Broadcasting Corporation to offer Instant News to DBC's 30,000 subscribers and is in discussions to supply electronic SEC filings to several other Wall Street information distributors.

IFN's principal products are EdgarWatch(TM), a 32-bit Windows program that utilizes push technology on the internet to provide continual real-time filing information and Smart Edgar(TM), a leading web-based program designed to deliver the same information anytime, anywhere and on any platform. Instant News is offered on a tiered subscription basis over EdgarWatch and an Instant News web site is under development. IFN, founded in 1994, has offices in New York and Ft. Lauderdale. The Travelers Group (NYSE:TRV) and Data Broadcasting Corporation (NASDAQ:DBCC) together hold a controlling equity interest in IFN.

CONTACT: Clifford Boro or Tim Metz/Catherine Giller

Internet Financial Network Abernathy/MacGregor Group

Tel: 212/816-8519 Tel: 212/371-5999

Fax: 212/816-8577 Fax: 212/371-7097

E-mail: cboro@ifn.com E-mail: tm@abmac.com