Naspers announced that it has partnered with BFA-NET, the country`s leading fundamental financial analysis software developer by acquiring a majority stake in the company and creating a partnership with one of the country`s primary suppliers of investment related information about South African companies. The BFA-NET product offering constitutes a dominant fundamental financial investment research platform for corporate investors interested in stocks, bonds, unit trusts, mutual funds, futures, options, and other financial instruments. The company`s two primary packages BFA-PRO and BFA Office have established BFA-NET as the leading supplier of historical financial information to the market. In the six months since BFA-NET entered the real-time market the company has made significant inroads into an area traditionally dominated by a handful of companies. In addition, the company caters to the private investor market with its web site BFA-NET.COM http://www.bfanet.com. The site has over 7000 portfolio holders and receives in excess of 50,000 page requests a day. Partnering with BFA-NET will compliment the Naspers strategy to extend its strong base in financial journalism to the field of information provision in the corporate and professional investors market, according to Philip Meyer, Naspers CEO for Information and Technology. The company is already firmly entrenched in the financial market and publishes the financial magazines Finansies & Tegniek and F&T Weekly and the business pages of Beeld, Die Burger and Die Volksblad. Meyer said, "It was clear to us that by acquiring of a majority stake in BFA-NET we could safely claim that we now own virtually the entire market for historical investment information and a significant stake of the real time market. We have identified the markets we intend to pursue using a combination of propriety and open platforms linked to Internet based technologies." BFA-NET managing director, Jos Pols said, "Of all the companies which approached us, Naspers was the only one which shared our vision of the financial information market and the direction in which it is headed. Given Naspers` long term strategy for the financial sector it made perfect sense to partner with them." The partnership with BFA-NET, which comes hard on the heels of Naspers` buy-out of McGregors, puts the publishing giant in the position of owning some of the most important historical financial databases in the country. Asked how the deal with BFA-NET would link in to the Naspers Internet strategy, Meyer said that BFA-NET was already using the Internet as a very powerful and cost effective delivery platform. "And apart from using the `Net to deliver some of its corporate and professional services BFA-NET has established a very popular free financial web site which draws in excess of 50 000 page requests a day. We will now consider how this technology can form part of our mass market strategy on the Internet thereby allowing BFA-NET to focus on its core business, namely the institutional investor." Meyer pointed out that the new partnership could now pursue the goal of becoming the primary supplier of investment related information on public and unlisted companies in SA.
Share