TV 18 buys Crisil MaketWire

Television Eighteen India (TV 18) today announced acquisition of Crisil MarketWire (CMW) from the rating agency Crisil for an undisclosed amount.

Post acquisition"" to be effected from the next calendar year"" the news agency will be rechristened NewsWire18 Pvt..

The announcement marks the second acquisition of a news agency after Zee took over UNI last month.

TV 18 will acquire assets, liabilities and staff of CMW. It will also invest to transform CMW from a news agency to a data and news platform, the first indigenous platform to compete with foreign services such as Bloomberg and Reuters.

With 60 journalists across 9 bureaus in the country, CMW currently has 40 per cent of institutional news market and is subscribed by a bevy of brokerage houses, equity analysts and news channels. Pankaj Aher, currently Chief Executive Officer of CMW, would continue in his position in the new entity.

Haresh Chawla, Group CEO, TV 18, said the data platform would be ready "fairly soon". Although he did not divulge the required investment for this, industry sources said putting the hardware in place would need nearly Rs 40 crore.