Thomson Financial Acquires Market Systems, Inc.

Regulatory Compliance Products and Services Will Be Integrated within Thomson Financial’s Institutional Equities Offering

NEW YORK, NY, 04/24/2006, Thomson Financial, an operating unit of The Thomson Corporation (NYSE: TOC; TSX: TOC) and leading provider of information and technology solutions to the worldwide financial community, announced that it has acquired privately-held Market Systems, Inc. (MSI), a software systems company for Transaction Cost Analysis (TCA) and trade execution compliance. Financial terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

Market Systems provides best execution compliance technology and services to measure and audit agency trading activity, thereby fulfilling the SEC regulatory requirement to provide customers with best execution.

“Market Systems is the logical partner for Thomson in the institutional equities space as it has shown impressive growth, achieving the leading market position in compliance services for domestic equity trading,” said Jim Toffey, president of Thomson Financial’s Institutional Equities, Fixed Income and Retail Wealth Management group. “We plan to leverage Market Systems’ impressive performance alongside Thomson Financial’s expertise to facilitate expansion into international markets and the addition of new asset classes, together with new functionality.”

Thomson Financial’s strategy is to improve customer performance over the entire trading workflow. The acquisition of Market Systems, combined with the liquidity of Thomson AutEx and the Thomson Order Routing global trading community, ensures that traders can rely on Thomson Financial to achieve best execution.

Thomson Financial will accelerate Market Systems’ positive growth trajectory by focusing on the following three objectives:

Expanding the domestic equity compliance platform to international markets

Expanding the platform to new asset classes including fixed income and options

Leveraging the data mining expertise of MSI to enhance existing transaction cost analysis tools.


Thomson Financial’s primary drivers for this acquisition are to help clients comply with new regulatory changes, such as Regulation NMS and MiFID, as well as create opportunities for further differentiation along the whole trade cycle. Market Systems’ advanced transaction analytics will significantly enhance the value of trading over the Thomson Order Routing network. Additionally, the integration of transaction cost analysis into Thomson ONE will immediately add to the usability and functionality of Thomson Financial’s Institutional Equity solutions and will create differentiation in the Fixed Income community.

“We are committed to providing our customers with a distinct competitive advantage within the securities industry by providing the most accurate and reliable best execution analysis using our own proprietary suite of industry leading analysis tools,” noted Ted Karn, President of Market Systems, Inc. “The high quality of our offering and strong market demand for regulatory compliance products and services, makes this the ideal time to integrate within the Thomson Financial full suite of Institutional Equities offerings. It’s a real win for our customers.”

Market Systems Inc., co-founded by Ted and Linda Karn, is the leading distributor of SEC Rule NMS execution quality data to both equity brokers and exchanges. The firm provides daily best execution surveillance for the majority of retail equity trades in the United States.

Market Systems, Inc. will be renamed Thomson Transaction Analytics and will reside within Thomson Financial’s Institutional Equities segment. It will complement the liquidity contained within the Thomson Order Routing network, one of the world’s largest electronic trading communities, with connections serving over 4,500 buyside and sellside institutions of all sizes. In addition, clients can source trading partners by utilizing the Thomson AutEx community, which handles in excess of 600,000 messages over the network each day, to post trade advertisements and Indications of Interests (IOIs).

Thomson Financial will retain Market Systems’ management to appropriately strengthen its Institutional Equities leadership team. Ted Karn will serve as Vice President, Transaction Analytics and will report directly to Dan Kramer, EVP and Global Head of Institutional Equities, Thomson Financial. All existing Market Systems reporting relationships will be preserved.

About Thomson Financial
Thomson Financial, with 2005 revenues of US$1.9 billion, is a provider of information and technology solutions to the worldwide financial community. Through the widest range of products and services in the industry, Thomson Financial helps clients in more than 70 countries make better decisions, be more productive and achieve superior results. Thomson Financial is part of The Thomson Corporation (www.thomson.com), a global leader in providing integrated information solutions to more than 20 million business and professional customers in the fields of law, tax, accounting, financial services, higher education, reference information, corporate e-learning and assessment, scientific research and healthcare. With revenues of US$8.70 billion, The Thomson Corporation lists its common shares on the New York and Toronto stock exchanges (NYSE: TOC; TSX: TOC).

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Kerri Shepherd

Manager, Public Relations

The Thomson Corporation

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