Financial Data Provider Files for Bankruptcy

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By Seth Sutel
The Associated Press

NEW YORK (AP) - Bridge Information Systems Inc., a major provider of financial data and news, filed for bankruptcy Thursday and hired an investment banker to consider a sale of the company.

Bridge spokesman Joel Weiden said the company did not plan to make layoffs and would continue to operate normally while it goes through reorganization. Bridge is the largest provider of financial data in North America and the No. 2 in the world behind Reuters, delivering data on stocks, bonds, and currency to financial service companies worldwide.

Weiden also said Bridge abandoned a reorganization plan that its major creditors had agreed upon last week, and would instead go through with a standard bankruptcy proceeding, under which the court will decide how the company is restructured. The pre-arranged reorganization plan would have speeded up the proceedings, but now it's less clear how long Bridge will remain in bankruptcy.

The largest shareholder in Bridge, the New York investment firm Welsh, Carson, Anderson & Stowe, said it plans to make a bid for full control of the company. Bridge has also hired an investment bank to consider other bids, but Weiden declined to identify the bank or say whether other companies had expressed interest.

Bridge expanded rapidly over the past several years by acquiring other financial data companies, but it often had difficulty integrating them and making its systems run smoothly. It also had numerous complaints from clients over billing glitches.

Welsh, Carson and Bridge's other creditors have been discussing a refinancing for months, but Bridge's hand was forced when one creditor broke ranks and filed a petition to have Bridge declared bankrupt. Bridge's voluntary petition for reorganization under Chapter 11 filed Thursday supersedes the earlier Chapter 7 filing.

Bridge's deepening financial troubles have been spilling over to its creditors, including Dow Jones & Co., publisher of The Wall Street Journal. Dow Jones has already lost $1 billion from the sale of its loss-ridden financial data subsidiary Telerate to Bridge in 1998, but it has also completely written off the value of Bridge stock, originally worth $150 million, that it received as partial payment for Telerate.

Tampa Bay Online

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