About Dow Jones Newswires German Service

Dow Jones Newswires German Service

The Dow Jones Newswires German Service is the German-language financial newswire of Dow Jones & Company, operated in Germany through Dow Jones News GmbH. Founded in early 2004 to continue the news and publishing business previously run by vwd Vereinigte Wirtschaftsdienste GmbH, the company is 100 percent owned by Dow Jones & Company — the American publisher of The Wall Street Journal and operator of the global Dow Jones Newswires service, founded in 1882. In Germany, Dow Jones is known as a news agency and as a leading specialist news provider in commodities and energy, with products including the Dow Jones Stahl Monitor and Dow Jones TradeNews Energy. Its corporate home is presented at dowjones.com.

Overview

The German service delivers real-time German-language financial news to banks, brokers, asset managers, corporate treasuries and financial media: company news, market reports, economic data, commodities and energy coverage, and the specialist newsletters — around 30 in the German offering — that serve professional market participants. It operates within the global Dow Jones Newswires network: some 900 real-time editors producing around 10,000 news items per day for more than 423,000 professionals in 66 countries, in 10 languages.

The German operation's distinctive strength lies in its domestic newsgathering heritage: the 120 editorial staff taken over from vwd — located in Eschborn, Frankfurt, Berlin, Hamburg, Stuttgart, Düsseldorf, Munich and Brussels — gave Dow Jones a German newsroom of scale, covering Europe's largest economy from within. Dow Jones Newswires president Paul Ingrassia described the acquisition as giving the company "100% of the leading real-time financial-news service in Europe's largest economy."

History

The global Dow Jones Newswires service was founded in 1882, as the news operation of Dow Jones & Company — the publisher established by Charles Dow, Edward Jones and Charles Bergstresser, whose Wall Street Journal (founded 1889) became the world's leading business newspaper. Through the twentieth century, the newswires grew into the real-time news service of global finance, its journalists covering markets, companies and economies worldwide.

The German chapter began with Vereinigte Wirtschaftsdienste (vwd), the German-language financial newswire and business newsletter provider. Dow Jones — which already held a minority stake in the vertically integrated vwd — signed an agreement to acquire vwd's news division for €9.8 million in cash. In a simultaneous transaction, vwd's market-data terminal and services business was bought by an investment group headed by Edmund Keferstein. The net price of the transaction was about €4.4 million after netting out Dow Jones's €5.4 million share of the proceeds from the market-data sale.

Dow Jones kept vwd's 120 editorial staff, located in Eschborn, Frankfurt, Berlin, Hamburg, Stuttgart, Düsseldorf, Munich and Brussels, and re-branded the news unit as Dow Jones-VWD News. The then managing director of vwd, Michael Frank, became managing director of Dow Jones Newswires Germany and director of international business development, reporting to Michael Bergmeijer, VP of international sales and marketing for Dow Jones Newswires. On a pro-forma annualised basis, Dow Jones picked up revenue of about €18 million from the acquisition.

Dow Jones News GmbH was founded in early 2004 to continue the news and publishing business previously operated by vwd Vereinigte Wirtschaftsdienste GmbH, as a 100 percent subsidiary of Dow Jones & Company. In Germany, the company established itself as a news agency and as a specialist provider in commodities and energy — fields where German industry's global reach created strong demand for professional information.

The company's publishing portfolio was streamlined on 1 April 2009, when most of its foreign-trade publications — alongside the daily newspaper Nachrichten für Außenhandel, two business magazines and further regional and industry-focused information services — were sold to MBM Martin Brückner Medien GmbH, which cooperates with Dow Jones News GmbH.

A digital chapter opened in January 2012, when the German-language digital edition of The Wall Street Journal (WSJ.de) went online with a freemium business model. The launch — announced with the statement that "Germany needs to know more about the world and the world needs to be better informed about Germany" — brought the Journal's global business journalism to German readers, produced by local journalists based in Frankfurt, Berlin, Düsseldorf, Hamburg and Munich. Knut Engelmann was appointed managing editor for Germany for Dow Jones Newswires and The Wall Street Journal Deutschland, overseeing the combined news operation, with Ralf Drescher — formerly of Handelsblatt — joining as the site's editor. On 12 November 2014, it was announced that the German-language WSJ edition would be discontinued at year-end, a closure affecting up to 10 editorial staff in Germany.

Content and Programming

The German service's real-time wire delivers German-language financial news at market speed: German company announcements, earnings, DAX movements, economic data releases, ECB and Bundesbank decisions, and the commodities and energy coverage — steel, power, gas, emissions — in which the German operation specialises. The Dow Jones Stahl Monitor (steel) and Dow Jones TradeNews Energy are among its best-known specialist products, serving the industries where Germany's economic weight creates global information needs.

Around 30 newsletters serve the German professional market, delivering curated financial intelligence to subscribers' inboxes. The newswire's output feeds the terminals, trading systems and newsrooms of its professional customers, complementing the English-language global wire with German-language speed and domestic expertise.

The service's journalism follows the standards of financial newswires — fast, accurate, neutral — with the specialist knowledge that commodities, energy and German corporate coverage demand. Its reporters work the Frankfurt financial centre, the industrial regions and the Brussels EU beat, covering the markets and policies that move German business.

Coverage and Audience

The German service serves professional market participants throughout the German-speaking world: banks, brokers, asset managers, energy traders, steel industry professionals, corporate treasuries and financial media. Its Frankfurt-area base — the Eschborn/Frankfurt newsroom at the heart of continental Europe's financial centre — gives it direct access to the markets it covers.

Globally, Dow Jones Newswires reaches more than 423,000 professionals in 66 countries with around 10,000 news items per day from some 900 real-time editors, in 10 languages. The German service contributes domestic newsgathering to this global network while delivering the worldwide wire in German to its local customers — a two-way flow between Frankfurt and the world's financial centres.

Ownership

Dow Jones News GmbH is 100 percent owned by Dow Jones & Company, the American financial information and media company headquartered in New York. Dow Jones & Company — publisher of The Wall Street Journal, operator of Dow Jones Newswires and provider of financial information services — has itself been owned by News Corp since 2007.

The German subsidiary's history — from the vwd acquisition through the 2004 founding to the present — reflects Dow Jones's long-term commitment to the German market: owning, in Paul Ingrassia's words, "100% of the leading real-time financial-news service in Europe's largest economy."

Digital Presence

Dow Jones's corporate home at dowjones.com presents the company's global news and information services, including the Newswires operation. The German service's wire reaches customers through digital delivery — terminals, trading platforms, newsroom systems and email newsletters — in the real-time infrastructure of modern finance.

The company's German digital history includes the 2012–2014 WSJ.de experiment — the freemium German-language Wall Street Journal — which demonstrated both the ambition and the challenges of digital business journalism in the German market. The newswire business, by contrast, has remained the German operation's core: real-time financial news in German, delivered at market speed to the professionals who trade on it.

The website field in this profile reflects the parent company's corporate online home.