Hard-to-Get Information Made Easy with LexisNexis and Esmerk

Partnership delivers business critical information on Scandinavia, Central and Eastern Europe and Former Soviet Republics

The partnership, which marks the largest licensing agreement ever completed by Esmerk, provides access to more than 30 country news feeds from Northern, Central and Eastern Europe and Central Asia - areas of increasing importance to businesses and investors. Delivered daily, the expanded service provides LexisNexis customers with concise English-language summaries on key business issues, abstracted from thousands of local language sources and on the day of publication.

Bob De Laney, Director News & Business, LexisNexis UK, said:, “The partnership with Esmerk adds real value to our service, delivering hard-to-get market coverage from regions where local languages frequently prove to be a barrier.  The Esmerk content complements our existing coverage of these countries, such as leading global coverage from EIU, Datamonitor and Business Monitor International, to enhance our overall emerging market and global news coverage to meet growing customer demand for news from these regions. ”

Derek Cox, Group MD, Esmerk said: “Through our partnership with LexisNexis, customers are able to quickly and easily tap into information that is often difficult and time consuming to locate. With more than 2,500 stories from Northern Europe and the former Soviet Republics available each week, customers can stay on top of the key issues affecting their businesses.”

Research from the LexisNexis database indicates increasing news coverage from the UK broadsheets of Northern Europe, Central and Eastern Europe and the post-Soviet states. In 2007, 1,746 articles were written on these countries, a considerable proportion on the energy and utilities sectors, versus 1,182 written 10 years earlier - an increase of 47.7 per cent. Coinciding with market demand, Esmerk has also increased its coverage of these countries; in the first quarter of 2008, almost 700 articles on M&A activity in Russia and the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) were abstracted– more than double the volume for the same period in 2006.

Earlier this year, LexisNexis highlighted the growth of the coverage of Russia by the world’s media and identified the most covered companies and individuals. The majority of world media references to Russian companies are about Gazprom followed by TNK-BP, Lukoil, Rosneft and Sberbank. The majority of references to Russian businessmen are about Roman Abramovich,Oleg Deripaska, Viktor Vekselberg and Alexei Mordashov.

About LexisNexis

LexisNexis® (www.lexisnexis.com) is a leading global provider of information and services solutions, including its flagship Web-based Lexis® and Nexis® research services, to a wide range of professionals in the legal, risk management, corporate, government, law enforcement, accounting and academic markets. A member of Reed Elsevier [NYSE: ENL; NYSE: RUK] (www.reedelsevier.com), LexisNexis serves customers in 100 countries with 13,000 employees worldwide.

About Esmerk

Esmerk (www.esmerk.com) was founded in 1975 in Finland and has subsidiaries in France, Germany, Malaysia, Russia, Sweden, the UK and the US. Esmerk monitors thousands of sources from more than 130 countries worldwide, providing tailored current awareness services based on English-language abstracts to nearly 900 corporate clients in 28 countries, with end users worldwide.  Esmerk is a subsidiary of Helsinki-based Sanoma Corporation, a division of SanomaWSOY, a leading media group with activities in more than 20 countries.