Internet Securities, Inc., which trades as ISI Emerging Markets, is an information company that provides electronic subscription based data and information on emerging market economies. The company was founded in 1994 by Gary Mueller and acquired by Euromoney Institutional Investor in 1999. It is New York based.
During the height of the ‘Dotcom Bubble’ the company was profiled in a series of Harvard Business School case studies as a model for fundraising and as an example of the use of the internet to provide information transparency in countries with traditionally low standards of business information disclosure.[1]
80% of the Company was acquired by Euromoney Institutional Investor in 1999 for 32 MM USD.[2]
The company has 5 main products. The oldest is the Emerging Markets Information Service which the company identifies with the abbreviation EMIS. Broadly the service can be characterized as an aggregator of 3rd party data under license, with the addition of proprietarily produced company and Industry data.[3]
In 2000, the company acquired the Kadiev News Service.[4] This became the Company’s editorial arm, and the basis for IntelliNews, as electronic news subscriptions product principally covering Eastern Europe and Former Soviet Union. Georgi Kadiev, known in Bulgaria as the Red Yuppie’[5] remained as editor for a number of year, and later went on to a career in Bulgarian politics.
Also in 2000, the company acquired InfoLatina, a business in Mexico.[6]
In 2005, the company acquired CEICData[7] which placed it into the times series data arena.
In April 2010 the company acquired BPR Benchmark.
Other products include IFIS which specializes in Islamic Finance and DealWatch which concentrates on emerging market deal and transaction data. DealWatch evolved from the 2006 RussiaDeal Acquisition.[8]