ICC INFORMATION ACQUIRES COMPANIES HOUSE RECORDS

Britain's largest, fastest and most powerful online business information document image provider, ICC Information, has announced that they have acquired Companies House's London-based duplicate microfiche library. The 35,500 Kgs of microfiche (equivalent to more than 1 million Kgs of paper, or the weight of approximately 14,000 city traders) will be moved from London to ICC's Cardiff facility in August 1999, when ICC will also become a key part of Companies House's disaster recovery plan. ICC's unique scan-on-demand service for company information will offer much reduced turnaround times from Monday 13 September. ICC will announce hours of operation and document retrieval time pledges on 1 July.

The sale of the microfiche library, acquired in a competitive tender, is an important development for both ICC and Companies House. For Companies House, it marks a further step in its strategic plan to move towards an electronic environment for receipt, retention and dissemination of information, whilst for ICC it provides the opportunity to further grow its class-leading business information resource. Says Alistair Pauline, ICC's managing director:

"With merger mania beginning to grip the City once more, our acquisition will enable ICC to provide corporate finance professionals across banking, accountancy and legal firms with the most detailed and timely service possible. The ICC image bank currently provides instant access to every statutory company document filed since July 1996 and all directors' reports and accounts filed since March 1995. We are the only company that can provide finished company searches over the Internet. Acquisition of the Companies House London fiche library will enable us to provide a comprehensive and rapid scan-on-demand service to all our users.

"Our clients tell us that access to detailed records over the whole life of a company and the most rapid service possible are both critical to their needs. Whilst we will not be making the 4.6 million microfiched company records immediately available on-line, our scan-on-demand service will put ICC in the best possible position to provide detailed reports within minutes rather than hours and also at times outside normal business hours - often critical in an M&A situation".

Pauline also promised that the acquisition would not mean an end to ICC's commitment to search agents:
"ICC has worked closely with information distributors for more than 15 years and we will continue to develop and refine the technology they need to provide a service to regional and smaller businesses.

John Holden, Companies House's chief executive, said:

"The disposal of our London library is a milestone in the planned development of Companies House as we increasingly move into the provision of information on-line.

"From the end of August 1999, our microfiche library in London will close and our new London Information Centre at 21 Bloomsbury Street will be served with microfiche directly from our Cardiff library. Many of our customers are already well used to on-line ordering, and we are currently in discussion with our London customers as to how to meet their requirements for microfiche after August. "ICC will inherit our London microfiche library as it stands on 27 August. This snap shot of our records up to that date will be a valuable emergency backup for our Cardiff library, which we will continue to update. I believe this arrangement with ICC is a further example of the public and private sectors working consistently together to maximise access and service while keeping costs to a minimum.

ICC's business information image bank captures over 80,000 images direct from Companies House every day ( 20 million images each year) and adds some 12,000 "back catalogue" images per day through an ISO quality assured scanning process. The ICC image database is growing at over 1 Terrabyte of information per year. It utilises technology from Sun Microsystems, Informix and Hewlett-Packard, and represents the largest single installation of its kind for each of these companies. ICC are the only company document provider certified as compliant with the BSI's code of practice for the legal admissibility of electronic images; a demanding code of practice that requires a number of strictly monitored security, redundancy and recovery measures.