Survey shows almost 85% of regulatory announcements are still made on RNS

22/05/2002

Survey shows almost 85% of regulatory announcements are still made on RNS.

A survey by data technology company Knowledge Technology Solutions has found that the City is overwhelmingly still using the London Stock ExchangeÕs Regulatory News Service (RNS) for its company announcements, though RNS is losing market share week by week.

The research showed that over 86% of the 16,816 announcements made since the 15th April, when primary information providers (PIPs) entered the market, were carried via RNS.

After RNS, the next most popular provider was PRNewswire (10.4%), followed by Newslink (1.2%), with Businesswire (0.8%) and PIMS (0.4%) trailing behind. The research does not include Waymaker or Hugin, which started their services after the 15th April.

Although RNS is firmly the market leader, it has been losing a small percentage of market share to competitors each week. For example, in the first week it commanded 89.9% of the market, but by week five, this had fallen to 83.6%.

In April, the market for financial news was liberalised as a number of new companies offering regulatory news (PIPs) began providing competing services. The PIPs initially comprised of RNS, Business Wire, PIMS, PR Newswire and Newslink, with Waymaker and Hugin starting later.

Each of the PIPs is offering a different pricing structure based generally on a fixed annual fee, followed by a charge based on the word count of the financial release (see notes).