Morningstar France Completes Acquisition of Seeds Group, Including Seeds Finance and Multiratings

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Jul 01, 2010, 09:34 ET

CHICAGO and PARIS, July 1 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Morningstar France Holding, a subsidiary of Morningstar, Inc. (Nasdaq: MORN), a leading provider of independent investment research, has completed its previously announced acquisition of Seeds Group, a leading provider of investment consulting services and fund research in France. Terms were not disclosed.

Seeds Group was founded in 2002 and, through its subsidiary Seeds Finance, provides investment consulting services to pension funds, insurance companies, asset managers, banks, and brokerage firms. In addition to investment consulting, Seeds Group also operates Multiratings.com, a fund research and investment education website for advisor groups and institutions.

Seeds Group and its affiliates have 12 employees based in Paris. The company will become a subsidiary of Morningstar France.

The press release announcing Morningstar's plan to acquire Seeds Group is available at http://global.morningstar.com/seeds.

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 approximately 350,000 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 21 countries and a minority ownership position in a company based in one other country.

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 current global financial uncertainty; 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, 2009. 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..

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Contacts:
Media—In Chicago: Margaret Kirch Cohen, 312-696-6383 or [email protected]
Media—In Paris: Ingo Kellnar, +33 1 55 50 13 10 or [email protected]

Investors: Investors may submit questions to [email protected] or by fax to 312-696-6009.