FirstRain & Capital IQ Announce Expanded Reseller Agreement to Aid Web Research for Financial Professionals

SAN MATEO, Calif., March 2 /PRNewswire/ -- FirstRain, a leading provider of search and analytics for business professionals, and Capital IQ, a Standard & Poor's business and a leading provider of fundamental and qualitative research and analysis today announced a new reseller agreement to benefit interactive research on the web. Under the new agreement, Capital IQ will directly offer its clients access to FirstRain's full web research engine within Capital IQ's highly regarded financial information platform. The agreement represents an expansion of an earlier announced partnership between the two companies.

Under the new arrangement, all Capital IQ users will have access to summary web research from FirstRain embedded within the Capital IQ company pages.  Capital IQ's clients will also be able to license the full capabilities of FirstRain's powerful new research engine from the Capital IQ Platform.

"Over the past two years we have partnered with FirstRain to bring the most powerful business and financial intelligence to Capital IQ clients," said Randall Winn, executive managing director of Capital IQ. "FirstRain's ability to identify, synthesize and rank critical business information that is scattered across the web provides a competitive advantage to our customers.  We are pleased to extend our partnership and to be able to deliver the full range of FirstRain search and analytics to our end users."

"We are delighted to deepen our relationship with Capital IQ," said Penny Herscher, president and CEO of FirstRain. "Capital IQ is a leading provider of information and tools for the investment community. They are recognized as thought leaders in understanding how to enhance the workflow of the financial professional. The combination of FirstRain's new research engine with Capital IQ's platform, and its strong sales and support teams, creates an exciting opportunity for both firms."

In the fiercely competitive world of investments, access to critical business information provides significant competitive advantage. FirstRain's research engine sorts through the mountains of superfluous information found deep on the Web, and delivers focused, context-aware insights on companies, markets, and people.

Over the past two years, FirstRain and Capital IQ have worked to integrate FirstRain's focused web search capability into the Capital IQ Platform. This Platform is a web and Excel-based research product that combines deep information on companies, markets, and people worldwide with robust tools for fundamental analysis, idea generation, and work flow management. The Capital IQ platform today is deployed at over 4,200 leading investment banks, fund managers, private capital firms, and corporations.

For a product demonstration, you can visit the FirstRain website and for further information on the product, you can go here (http://www.firstrain.com/CapitalIQ.php).

For existing clients of Capital IQ, FirstRain content can be found on the Capital IQ Company News and Blogs pages.

About FirstRain

FirstRain provides a new and unique way for business professionals to leverage search technology as part of their research process. The FirstRain research engine intelligently filters the most insightful information and trends from the web about companies, the markets in which they operate, and the business trends impacting their markets.  FirstRain's technology also pulls together information from across the web, revealing interesting and useful analytics that signal opportunities for sales, marketing, Competitive Intelligence, Investor Relations and Investment Management professionals.  Partners include leading research platforms such as Capital IQ (a division of Standard & Poor's), Code: Red, FactSet Research Systems, Mergent, and Wall Street On Demand.  FirstRain is a privately-held company headquartered in San Mateo, California, with additional offices in New York, and Gurgaon, India. For more information, contact FirstRain at www.firstrain.com. 

About Capital IQ and Standard & Poor's

Capital IQ, a Standard & Poor's business, delivers comprehensive fundamental and quantitative research and analysis solutions to over 4,200 investment management firms, investment banks, private equity funds, advisory firms, corporations, and universities worldwide. Its solutions are based on the Capital IQ platform, COMPUSTAT, ClariFI, and SystematIQ products, and offer an array of powerful applications for desktop research, screening, real-time market data, backtesting, portfolio management, financial modeling, and quantitative analysis. For more information, please visit Capital IQ's web site at www.capitaliq.com.

Standard & Poor's, a subsidiary of The McGraw-Hill Companies (NYSE: MHP), is the world's foremost provider of independent credit ratings, indices, risk evaluation, investment research and data. With offices in 23 countries and markets, Standard & Poor's is an essential part of the world's financial infrastructure and has played a leading role for 150 years in providing investors with the independent benchmarks they need to feel more confident about their investment and financial decisions. For more information, visit www.standardandpoors.com.

SOURCE Capital IQ