Morningstar Acquires Footnoted.org
February 09 2010 - 9:22AM
PR Newswire (US)
CHICAGO, Feb. 9 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Morningstar, Inc.
(NASDAQ: MORN), a leading provider of independent investment
research, today announced it has acquired the Footnoted business of
Financial Fineprint Inc., a privately held firm based in Peekskill,
N.Y. The acquisition includes the Footnoted.org website and the
Footnoted Pro service. Terms were not disclosed. Footnoted.org was
founded in 2003 by Michelle Leder, author and journalist.
Footnoted's research staff pores over hundreds of SEC filings a day
to unearth critical information buried in the fine print, such as
evidence of aggressive accounting, excessive compensation, or the
type of questionable self-dealing that can indicate more serious
problems at a company. With original insight and analysis culled
from corporate filings, Footnoted's free site has become a
must-read for professional money managers and analysts, as well as
sophisticated individual investors. The company also publishes
Footnoted Pro, a service for institutional investors, such as hedge
fund firms, that provides insight on actionable items and trends in
filings. Leder will continue to run Footnoted, and Morningstar will
make some content from the site available on Morningstar.com, the
company's investment website. In the near future, footnoted.org
will become footnoted.com. Additionally, Morningstar will also
offer Footnoted Pro to its individual investor, advisor, and
institutional clients. "Morningstar is always looking for ways to
provide investors with information to make investing as transparent
as possible. There are few better examples of that principle in
action than the work Footnoted does to demystify the often-complex
details hidden deep in companies' federal filings," said Kunal
Kapoor, president of individual investor software at Morningstar.
"Its content is a natural fit with our investor-centric offerings
at Morningstar.com and is a perfect companion to our tools,
reports, and research." "Footnoted and Morningstar share a common
goal to shed light on investing, but many investors remain in the
dark," Leder said. "For the past six years, Footnoted's small staff
has uncovered lots of examples of self-serving actions at publicly
traded companies. As part of Morningstar, we'll be able to provide
Footnoted.org's loyal readers with additional resources from a
trusted source for independent research, and we'll expose thousands
of Morningstar clients to our unique content--and what's truly
lurking in public filings." Leder became interested in SEC filings
early in her career, while writing about a small Florida bank that
was engaged in aggressive accounting during the last real estate
boom. As a reporter and editor, she spent 10 years at daily
newspapers in Florida, Connecticut, and New York. As a freelance
business journalist, her work has appeared in BusinessWeek, The New
York Times, Portfolio and Slate, among others. Leder is widely
quoted in the news media as an expert on SEC filings. In 2003, she
authored the book Financial Fine Print, which led her to launch
Footnoted.org. Since its inception, Footnoted has been lauded by
BusinessWeek, CNN/Money, Financial Times, Fortune, Time, and The
Wall Street Journal. About Morningstar, Inc. Morningstar, Inc. is a
leading provider of independent investment research in North
America, Europe, Australia, and Asia. The company offers an
extensive line of Internet, software, and print-based products and
services for individuals, financial advisors, and institutions.
Morningstar provides data on more than 325,000 investment
offerings, including stocks, mutual funds, and similar vehicles,
along with real-time global market data on more than 4 million
equities, indexes, futures, options, commodities, and precious
metals, in addition to foreign exchange and Treasury markets. The
company has operations in 20 countries and minority ownership
positions in companies based in two other countries. Caution
Concerning Forward-Looking Statements This press release contains
forward-looking statements as that term is used in the Private
Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These statements are
based on our current expectations about future events or future
financial performance. Forward-looking statements by their nature
address matters that are, to different degrees, uncertain, and
often contain words such as "may," "could," "expect," "intend,"
"plan," "seek," "anticipate," "believe," "estimate," "predict,"
"potential," or "continue." These statements involve known and
unknown risks and uncertainties that may cause the events we
discussed not to occur or to differ significantly from what we
expected. For us, these risks and uncertainties include, among
others, general industry conditions and competition, including the
global financial crisis that began in 2007; the impact of market
volatility on revenue from asset-based fees; damage to our
reputation resulting from claims made about possible conflicts of
interest; liability for any losses that result from an actual or
claimed breach of our fiduciary duties; financial services industry
consolidation; a prolonged outage of our database and network
facilities; challenges faced by our non-U.S. operations; and the
availability of free or low-cost investment information. A more
complete description of these risks and uncertainties can be found
in our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission,
including our Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended
December 31, 2008. If any of these risks and uncertainties
materialize, our actual future results may vary significantly from
what we expected. We do not undertake to update our forward-looking
statements as a result of new information or future events. ©2010
Morningstar Inc. All rights reserved. MORN-C Media Contacts:
Margaret Kirch Cohen, 312-696-6383 or Michelle Leder, 914-382-6181
or DATASOURCE: Morningstar, Inc. CONTACT: Margaret Kirch Cohen,
+1-312-696-6383, ; or Michelle Leder, +1-914-382-6181, Web Site:
http://www.morningstar.com/
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