DirectFN, Dow Jones Ally for English-Language MENA News

The English-language newswire is aimed at sell-side and buy-side institutional investors─both those based locally and international firms that invest in the region─and combines detailed regional coverage with global reporting and analysis of companies, economics and general business news. The service includes commentary and analysis of public, private and state-owned enterprises, as well as coverage of regional stock market activity, government privatizations and budgetary moves, and economic trends and infrastructure tenders.

In part, DirectFN's partnership with Dow Jones was prompted by Thomson Reuters' 2012 acquisition of fellow Dubai-based MENA news and business intelligence provider Zawya, which led to the winding down of the publisher's similar Dow Jones Zawya product.

"There seemed to be a gap in the marketplace with the Dow Jones Zawya news disappearing. As such, as we were already working with them in a vendor capacity, it made sense to explore opportunities to tighten that relationship and have a newswire that's more attuned to both of our clients' requirements," says David Hann, head of sales for market data and content acquisition equity brokerage at DirectFN.

DirectFN already carried Dow Jones news as a service for international clients, and has its own team of around 25 reporters through the MENA region covering market information. Dow Jones has a small bureau in the region, which contributed some stories to its coverage, Hann says.

"We decided to speak to them about exploring working together and producing a more combination product partnership... that covers the Middle East markets in more depth, mainly for the English-speaking and -reading community because a lot of news in the region breaks in Arabic, but it doesn't really get translated that quickly via the vendors, therefore there was a gap in the market," he says, adding that the key driver for the launch of Mubasher Dow Jones is the lack of in-depth information on companies in the region. "There is lots of aggregated news, there is very sporadic high coverage of large-cap stocks by some of the other vendors, but it doesn't really cover [the region] in much detail. At the moment, the marketplace is kind of scrambling around a number of different venues or websites to find news. What they want is a single view of what's happening in the region across all companies, whether that be on an economic basis, a company basis, or anything that could impact an investment within the MENA region."

Mubasher Dow Jones Newswire is the first phase of the co-branded partnership with Dow Jones, in which each vendor contributes content to the newswire. "From there, obviously we will look to see where we can leverage that relationship to bring new initiatives to the marketplace, depending on both parties' input, as well as what our clients come back and say that they would want to see," he says.

Finance professionals can subscribe to the newswire via Mubasher's new MENA market intelligence platform, Decypha, from Jan. 15. The service is one of several initiatives added to a new release of the platform, along with additional data on private companies and screening tools, which will be rolled out at the end of this month.