AOL jumped in to purchase Relegence yesterday, an intriguing move given that AOL's focus has more recently appeared to be a shift away Access and to start seeking ways to generate more ad revenue from its consumer operations.
Immediate thoughts on this popping into my alert yesterday afternoon were that it might be part of some wonderful new strategy where AOL is looking to move into some sort of B2B application market -- a market we like at MarketClusters ;-). Relegence appeared heavily focused at doing big enterprise deals in the financial services community, and released announcements about projects with the likes of Credit Suisse where they'd create clever 'black boxes' that would seamlessly mixing together millions of external feed articles with internal equity research and the like.
AOL alternatively could be just buying Relegence more for its tech expertise rather than its projected financial services revenue streams - and using its platform as a means of improving the feeds filtering into an enhanced consumer finance section; taking on Yahoo! Finance seems like a one route they might be backing and we look forward to a bit more clarity on how this 60-man Relegence team fits in.
From StrategyWire - AOL acquires real-time financial information provider, Relegence :
"AOL has acquired real-time financial information provider, Relegance Corporation. Financial details were not disclosed, but the deal is reported to be worth USD55-65m. Relegance's Knowledgehub platform monitors, indexes and filters news and information published by 20,000 sources (including news wires, regulatory feeds, TV broadcasts, websites and bulletin boards). Relegance's subscription service immediately delivers relevant information to a client's desktop. Clients include 70 financial institutions. AOL Consumer & Publisher executive VP, Jim Bankoff, says that the deal is designed to complement its "web services strategy, where content management for web publishing will be a critical component of delivering the best experience for our users."
Little information seems available on valuation although MarketWatch cites a couple of Israeli sources who pt the deal in the $50 to $100m range.
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