Hugin Group

The Hugin Group, now part of Thomson Reuters, distributes full-text, unedited News releases from companies around the world. With a focus on European newswire distribution to the news media, Hugin has strategic relationships with partners in the US (Marketwire) and in Asia (Japan Corporate News Network, Asia Corporate News Network.)

Business

Hugin distributes both Investor Relations and more general Public Relations content. Content distribution services are provided to companies in 26 countries.

The company distributes news directly from its clients to mainstream news agencies such as Reuters, Bloomberg, Yahoo, Comtex and Dow Jones, is licensed to handle regulatory news disclosure under the European Transparency Directive, part of the MiFiD, maintains a database of over 152,000 journalists, provides website creation products, webcasts and PR services.

Origin

The Hugin Group has its origins in 3 earlier companies:

• Companynews was founded in Paris, France in 1999 by the Agence France Presse and (French) L'Agefi. Companynews had always been a pure player of the financial news distribution industry.

• Directnews AG, based in Leipzig, was founded in 2002 with the aim of providing PR communication support for European companies.

• Hugin was founded in Oslo, Norway in 1995, beginning with annual report distribution on CD-ROM. With the advent of the commercial Internet, distribution quickly switched to the then new medium. Hugin was the first company to offer a comprehensive do-it-yourself publishing system via the Internet, and by 2007 Hugin had expanded to have a presence in 11 European countries.

History

• October 2005: Hugin acquires Directnews ;
• March 2006: Euronext acquires Companynews ;
• December 2006: NYSE Euronext acquires Hugin ;
• June 2007: the new group operates under a single Hugin brand and forms the leading pan-European corporate communications service provider ;
• September 2009: Hugin Group is bought by the global financial information firm Thomson Reuters. Although terms have not been disclosed, it has been reported in the Danish press that the price was between €40m and €42m;^[1] Hugin Group B.V. has been acquired and is a Thomson Reuters company since October 15, 2009.

References

Hugin Group website