Dow Jones & Company and von Holtzbrinck Group Agree to Swap Stakes in The Wall Street Journal Europe and Handelsblatt, Germany's Business Newspaper

Business Wire, June 1, 1999

NEW YORK/DUSSELDORF, Germany--(BUSINESS WIRE)--June 1, 1999--

Companies Plan Substantial Investments in European Journal,

News Sharing Between Newspapers

Dow Jones & Company and Verlagsgruppe Georg von Holtzbrinck announced today that they have agreed to swap minority stakes in The Wall Street Journal Europe and Handelsblatt, Germany's business newspaper. In conjunction with the swap, the two companies announced a major investment program in The Wall Street Journal Europe. In addition, the companies said that the two newspapers would begin sharing news articles.

Under the agreement, the von Holtzbrinck group will now own 49% of the European Journal, while Dow Jones will own 22% of Handelsblatt.

The Wall Street Journal Europe growth program will include:

-- A doubling of the newspaper's circulation within five years; -- The addition, over the next year, of 10 reporters to a European

staff that already numbers more than 70 reporters and editors; -- An expansion of page capacity from 32 to 40 pages per day, and of

color pages from eight to 12; -- The addition of two new print sites, bringing the total for the

European Journal to six, by the end of next year; -- With all of these initiatives to be supported by a multi-million

dollar advertising and marketing campaign.

In addition, the content of The Wall Street Journal Europe will be strengthened by the availability to Journal editors of material from Handelsblatt, translated from German into English by Journal translators on a "real-time" basis for same-day publication.

Similarly, Handelsblatt's content will be augmented by the availability to its editors of Wall Street Journal articles, translated into German by Handelsblatt translators, also on a "real-time" basis. Dow Jones will maintain full editorial control over The Wall Street Journal Europe, while the von Holtzbrinck group will maintain full editorial control over Handelsblatt.

The growth program for The Wall Street Journal Europe comes on the heels of circulation growth of nearly 6% in 1998, to more than 70,000 copies daily, a record, with daily readership exceeding 300,000. Advertising revenues at the publication rose 34% in the first quarter of this year, on top of double-digit increases -- and sharply rising profits -- in each of the last two years.

Peter R. Kann, chairman and CEO of Dow Jones & Company, said, "The growth initiative we are announcing today is the most significant in the European Journal's history, and the strategic logic of the partnership which will spur it is compelling. By building on our long association with the von Holtzbrinck group and Handelsblatt, we can more fully exploit the opportunities for The Wall Street Journal Europe and Dow Jones in Europe's buoyant and uniting market. We're very pleased to have reached this agreement."

Dieter von Holtzbrinck, chairman of Verlagsgruppe von Holtzbrinck, which owns Handelsblatt, said, "Our new agreement with Dow Jones represents a strategic alliance between the world's leading business publisher and Germany's number one business publisher. With this announcement, 10 years of excellent cooperation and friendship bears fruit, yielding for Handelsblatt exciting new possibilities in Europe."

Dow Jones and the von Holtzbrinck group have cooperated on a range of ventures since 1990. They have included joint interviews and conferences; "Europe Now", a cooperative advertising sales effort; sales representation of each other's interactive business services; publication of the Journal Europe's Convergence magazine in Handelsblatt; and joint holdings in various media properties.

As part of the agreement announced today, Dow Jones and the von Holtzbrinck group have realigned their direct and indirect holdings in the Czech business publisher Economia and the German financial news agency VWD. Dow Jones' interest in Economia will drop from 23.5% to 12%, while the von Holtzbrinck group's interest will rise from 32.5% to 44%. Dow Jones' interest in VWD will drop from 33.3% to 17%, while the von Holtzbrinck group's interest will rise from 33.3% to 49.6%.

Note to editors

About The Wall Street Journal Europe and Dow Jones & Company

The Wall Street Journal Europe, headquartered in Brussels, Belgium, was founded in 1983. The publication is currently printed in Germany, Belgium, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. In addition to The Wall Street Journal and its international and Interactive editions, Dow Jones & Company publishes Dow Jones Newswires, which deliver real-time economic, financial and market-affecting political news from around the world; dowjones.com, a vertical business portal on the free public Internet; Dow Jones Indexes, including Dow Jones STOXX; Barron's and SmartMoney magazines and other periodicals; and the Ottaway group of community newspapers. Dow Jones is co-owner of Dow Jones Reuters Business Interactive LLC, which provides business information direct to corporate desktops, and of the CNBC television operations in Europe and Asia. Dow Jones also provides news content to CNBC in the U.S.