Subsidiary | |
Founded | 1961 |
Founder | Lorry I. Lokey |
Headquarters | 101 California Street, San Francisco, California, United States |
Number of locations
|
32 (2016) |
Key people
|
Cathy Baron Tamraz (Chairman and CEO) Greg Castano (President) Richard DeLeo (COO) Steve Messick (CIO) |
Parent | Berkshire Hathaway |
Subsidiaries | Enhanced Online News BizWire TV Tradeshownews.com |
Website | www |
Business Wire is a company that disseminates full-text press releases from thousands of companies and organizations worldwide to news media, financial markets, disclosure systems, investors, information web sites, databases, bloggers, social networks and other audiences. It is a subsidiary of Berkshire Hathaway.
Business Wire was founded in 1961 by Lorry I. Lokey, it launched its company's website in May 1995. In 2000, Business Wire was the first commercial newswire to end the practice of distributing news to financial outlets 15-minutes before anyone else, to provide immediate, equal access to company information as noted by Reg FD.
Business Wire's first wholly owned European operation launched in 2001, with the opening of an office in London. On June 1, 2005, Business Wire entered the German Ad-Hoc market with a disclosure network for companies with primary or secondary listings on the Deutsche Boerse. The service was established in compliance with BaFin, Germany's national securities regulator. On September 15, 2005, Business Wire established Regulatory Disclosure networks in France, Sweden, Switzerland and Luxembourg. The move came in anticipation of the anticipated implementation of the EU's Transparency Obligations Directive (TOD). On January 1, 2007, Autorité des marchés financiers, the French Financial Markets Regulator, approved Business Wire to operate as a Regulatory Disclosure Service in France.
Since 2005, its Chief Executive Officer and President has been Cathy Baron Tamraz. On January 10, 2005, Business Wire established an Asian hub with the opening of its Tokyo, Japan bureau, and later that year added Japanese, making the site available in seven languages. On January 17, 2006, Berkshire Hathaway announced that it was purchasing Business Wire for an undisclosed amount. This acquisition was completed on March 1, 2006.
In 2008, Business Wire partnered with ImpreMedia to launch LatinoWire, a news distribution service that distributes brand content to Hispanic websites, media outlets, journalists and bloggers. In 2011, Business Wire received a patent for the technological process of optimizing and distributing press releases to maximize their ability to be found and tracked in leading search engines.