Michael Becker Named Business Wire's Senior Vice President, Financial Product Strategy

NEW YORK--Rewarding his leadership role in creating global disclosure solutions that have made Business Wire the industry's regulatory compliance leader, Michael Becker has been promoted to senior vice president, Financial Product Strategy, it was announced today by Cathy Baron Tamraz, chief executive officer.

In his expanded role, Becker will move beyond his core disclosure responsibilities and will focus on developing new products and partnerships within the broader financial community, as well as identifying new content opportunities that will leverage Business Wire's advanced formatting capabilities and comprehensive global file.

Under Becker's guidance, Business Wire today offers a comprehensive suite of services for the investor relations community. They include: an in-house team of XBRL accounting specialists that meta-tag financial statements, and prepare validated instance documents for SEC submission. Business Wire also has its own in-house EDGAR Desk, consistently ranking among the top SEC filers. Becker also worked closely with Business Wire's European team, setting up more than a dozen disclosure networks throughout the European Union, keyed to the January 2007 implementation of the EU's Transparency Obligations Directive [TOD].

Additionally, Becker established a SEDAR filing service catering to Business Wire's Canadian exchange-listed clients, and a worldwide Corporate Social Responsibility distribution network.

"Michael's knowledge of all-things-disclosure has earned him this much deserved promotion," said Tamraz in making the announcement at Business Wire's annual sales conference in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. "He has worked diligently to introduce 'best practices disclosure' to international markets, liaising with securities regulators in major world financial centers. Michael also has kept Business Wire at the forefront of important compliance changes, particularly the SEC's adoption of XBRL."

Becker's thought leadership has been recognized by several leading industry organizations. He currently serves as the Chair of the XBRL-U.S. Communications Steering Committee, and is executive vice president of programs for the NIRI-New York chapter, the association's largest chapter with some 600 members.

Becker holds an Executive MBA from Baruch College.

About Business Wire

Business Wire, a Berkshire Hathaway company, is utilized by tens of thousands of member companies and organizations worldwide to functionally enhance and communicate investor relations and public relations content to target audiences. As a recognized disclosure service in the United States, Canada and a dozen European countries, Business Wire facilitates the simultaneous flow of market-moving press releases from corporations to financial markets and their audiences, including regulatory authorities, media, investors, financial information systems and consumer news services. Business Wire also handles XBRL tagging, document formatting and regulatory filing into EDGAR, SEDAR, FSA and other systems.

Communications professionals turn to Business Wire to optimize and issue press releases, photos and multimedia to news organizations, journalists, trade publications, search engines, and individuals, with full-text posting to web sites, online services and databases. A range of distribution options enables members to target by geography, industry, news theme and audience demographics.

Founded in 1961, Business Wire has dual headquarters in San Francisco and New York, with 30 bureaus in cities including Los Angeles, Chicago, Boston, Miami, Paris, Frankfurt, London, Brussels, Tokyo, Toronto and Sydney and reciprocal offices throughout the world. Business Wire's patented NX data platform supports XML, XHTML and XBRL code that enhances news release interactivity, social media sharing and search engine optimization. More information about Business Wire and its services is located on its website at www.BusinessWire.com.

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