Marketwire

Type	Privately held
Industry	News dissemination
Founded	1982 (as Canadian Corporate News)
Headquarters	Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Area served	Canada, United States, United Kingdom, Europe, Asia, and Latin America
Key people	Michael J. Nowlan (President and Chief Executive Officer)
Services	Newswire (press release distribution) and media contact management (Mediahub) services
Owner(s)	OMERS Capital Partners
Employees	300+
Subsidiaries	Sysomos
Website	http://www.marketwire.com/

Marketwire is a full-service newswire and communications workflow solutions company headquartered in Toronto, Canada with offices throughout Canada, the United States, South America, and Asia. Marketwire was founded in 1993 and incorporated in the U.S in 1999. The company distributes press releases via traditional methods (Associated Press, Bloomberg, etc.) as well as new media methods and provides, multimedia (photo and video) distribution, conferencing services, media contact management and media monitoring services. The company has more than 13,000 clients worldwide and has nineteen offices.

Corporate history

Marketwire, under its original name Internet Wire, began service in October, 1994, as the first Internet-based press release distribution company. The company was founded by PR agency owner Michael Terpin and online marketer Michael Shuler in Los Angeles, CA, and received $17.5 million in venture capital to expand operations in January, 2000^[1]. The company changed its name to Market Wire in April, 2003, after sealing a strategic deal with NASDAQ^[2].

In 2006, Marketwire was acquired by CCNMatthews, a 25-year-old news distribution company in Canada. The company adopted the name Marketwire unilaterally. The company is now majority-owned by OMERS Capital Partners^[3], the private equity arm of one of Canada's largest pension funds. The company's history can be traced back to 1957.

In July 2010, Marketwire acquired Sysomos, a social monitoring and analytics service, offering customers the ability to track their social presence across sites like Facebook and Twitter.^[4]

Operations

The company's operations are categorized into four offerings.

• Press Release Distribution
• Multimedia
• Media Management
• Monitoring Solutions

Corporate Affairs

Marketwire's President and Chief Executive Officer is Michael J. Nowlan. The company's headquarters is in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Offices locations include Canada, United States, South America, and Asia. The company has more than 13,000 clients worldwide and has nineteen offices.

Controversial Events

On August 24, 2000, Mark Jakob, a former employee, used Internet Wire to send a fraudulent press release to the news media. The press release falsely reported that Emulex Corporation was suddenly in dire straits; several news outlets picked up the story the next morning, causing Emulex to lose 62% of its value in morning trading. The FBI later discovered that Jakob had shorted Emulex stock, and he was sentenced to 44 months in prison.^[5]

For more details on this topic, see Emulex hoax.

Notable events

Matthews' List 1957

In 1956, a senior federal Department of Industry officer named Ted Bullock was assigned to promote Canadian businesses and industries involved in the following year's Brussels World Fair. A list of every media outlet in the country, he felt, might help him to do his job better. So he suggested his friend, Syd Matthews, compile that list.

In 1957, Canada's first media directory was published by Syd Matthews. At 13 pages, the list contained the mailing address and senior personnel for 23 daily newspapers and was mailed to 33 subscribers. Marketwire celebrated the 50th anniversary of this directory on October 10, 2007.

References

1. ^ http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_pwwi/is_20050229/ai_mark01001742/
2. ^ http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Renamed+Market+Wire+looks+to+Nasdaq+deal+to+boost+Business.+(Media+&...-a0101531967
3. ^ OMERS Capital Partners
4. ^ Official Announcement. "Marketwire acquires Sysosmos for social media monitoring and analytics." July 6, 2010.
5. ^ "Defendant in Emulex Hoax Sentenced": Securities and Exchange Commission, Litigation Release No. 17094, August 8, 2001.

External links

• Marketwire - official site