Major news agencies in the UK and Germany have increased their investment in real-time financial news provider Alliance News.
The UK and Ireland’s PA Media and Germany’s DPA (Deutsche Presse-Agentur) increased their combined stake to just over 21% (10.68% each) from just under 8% (3.86% each).
The news agencies will now take seats on an expanded Alliance News board.
Alliance News founded a UK service providing fast updates of every London-listed company in 2013 and later expanded into Italy, South Africa and a Global 500 service.
Tom Waite, its founder, editor and chief executive, said PA and DPA’s increased investment was an “important moment”.
“It is great to see DPA and PA stepping up their ownership of the company and involvement in our future direction at this crucial stage in our development.
“We are increasingly working with DPA and its other portfolio companies, including DPA-AFX and AWP, on expanding our global news coverage. With PA, we are contributing news to the PA Mediapoint platform for PR and communications professionals, and recently we started to partner with PA’s social media specialist agency Hydrogen on custom-publishing projects.”
PA Media Group chief executive Emily Shelley said: “The news agenda will continue to be dominated by business and financial developments as companies in the UK, Europe and elsewhere navigate this period of political and economic change.
“Alliance News is well positioned to provide the coverage that decision makers rely on and shares PA’s values of timely and accurate journalism.”
And DPA chief executive Peter Kropsch said: “We have been shareholders in Alliance News since 2017 and are very satisfied. The company has developed excellently since then. It harmonises perfectly with the portfolio of our financial news agency operations in Germany and Switzerland.
“We look forward to supporting Alliance News and its management team even more in the development of new markets and products through our expanded involvement.”
PA Media Group and DPA are both themselves largely owned by other media businesses. PA has 20 shareholders, mainly UK news and media businesses with DMGT, Informa, News UK and Reach holding the biggest stakes, while DPA is owned by more than 170 media companies.
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