M.A.I.D PLC said Thursday it will buy Knight-Ridder Inc.’s business-information unit for $420 million, giving it 25 percent of the world’s market for on-line news and data.
M.A.I.D is betting its software will make it easier for customers to fetch everything from news stories to scientific and financial data from Knight-Ridder Information Inc.’s services such as Dialog and Datastar.
That will help it take on Reed Elsevier PLC’s Lexis-Nexis for the lead in the $1 billion market.
The move comes as traditional on-line companies are smarting from the surging popularity of the Internet, where the same kinds of news or data are cheaper or even free. That’s hurt Knight-Ridder Information’s profits, and its Miami-based parent has sought a buyer for months to focus on newspapers.
“M.A.I.D is rolling the dice,” said Bill Doyle, an analyst at Forrester Research Inc. “Dialog and Lexis-Nexis and the like are stuck with an old business model.”
The firms said in August they were close to a sale. The deal is to be completed by November.
