INSIDE MARKET DATA MINDS

Our customers rank our service based on accuracy, coverage, timeliness, reliability and customer service. Interactive Data/Financial Times Information is unique in that we have to live up to our customers' expectations of these criteria on a very wide variety of securities and detailed data content. We cover more than 3.5 million securities including domestic and international fixed income and listed markets. Throughout our organization, we are focused on meeting the needs of the "post trade" processing marketplace, against the criteria I have mentioned. Our customers are becoming increasingly global in the operation of their business and our goal is to meet their need for global data wherever they do business. We are one company of nearly 1,000 associates with primary hubs in the US, UK, and Australia, with the capability of providing delivery and service throughout the world--our clients value that.

The last major event was the launch of Interactivedata.com--a web browser tool that puts information on 3.5 million securities on someone's desktop. For the first time back office professionals can have "desktop access" to pricing, corporate action and descriptive data--combined with news content. We have also expanded our fixed income content to include Spread/Yield data. This allows the user to understand the assumptions we used in pricing a particular fixed income security.

Now someone in the back office can understand why the value of a security has or has not changed. The success of this product is evident by the fact that we already have more than 51 companies using it.

Such Internet and web browser applications are extremely exciting and will significantly change the way we all do business. This technology will allow us to go into new markets and to create further value for our customers that will distinguish us from other vendors.

It has to be Y2K. This is an enormous project for our industry that has brought all service suppliers "under the microscope" with regard to their plans and progress. Through last year, our emphasis was on internal systems and communicating plans to customers. This year, our focus has changed to working with customers to test applications and delivery systems. We have lots of people working on this project with our customers now and we will be working over the Millennium Weekend as well.

Other than Internet solutions, which I touched on before, the biggest opportunity is globalization. As more of our customers do business around the world they look to us to provide them with the accuracy, coverage, timeliness and reliability that they have come to expect from our organization. We have put a management structure in place to make sure we continue to meet those expectations and we are further developing our technical infrastructure to make sure we do it as efficiently as possible.

We also see great opportunity in Europe. With the advent of the euro and the expansion of mutual fund companies into Europe, we see great growth opportunity there. There will be more debt issuance than ever before and we are uniquely positioned to value those new issues with our experienced team of international evaluators.

A market downturn would be a big disappointment. We would not expect our revenues to drop as a result, but our growth rate could certainly be reduced. One of the benefits of our global emphasis is that if a particular geographic market becomes depressed, we are somewhat insulated by the other markets.

The Year 2000. Soon clients will be freezing code in preparation for year-end and "the big event." This means that it will become increasingly difficult to convert clients from other vendors. This freeze will extend into 2000; but once it is over, we think there will be plenty of opportunity.

We would like to buy businesses that would strengthen us in our "post trade" market niche or take us into attractive adjacent markets.