Thomson Financial, an operating unit of The Thomson Corporation (NYSE: TOC, TSX) and leading provider of information and technology solutions to the worldwide financial community, today announced it has joined forces with Microsoft Corp. to create integrated research and analysis solutions for institutional investment managers. The Thomson First Call Analyst application, built from Microsoft's suite of technology products, provides buy-side institutional money managers integrated access to an array of Thomson content sets, including First Call research and morning notes, global analyst estimates, Datastream historical pricing and charting, Worldscope company accounts data, Carson Institutional holdings data and ILX equity pricing, while also allowing customers to publish and integrate their own internally generated research and proprietary data sets. Using Microsoft� .NET, Thomson Financial is able to connect numerous streams of internal and external content to create a seamless, concise, powerful analytical tool.

"Thomson Financial is known to its customers as having industry-leading data and information, combined with speed of delivery and superior technology," noted Jeff Scott, chief technology officer at Thomson Financial. "When deciding how to integrate Thomson Financial's data, analytics and services so that clients benefit from one seamless platform, Microsoft technology -- most significantly .NET -- was the right choice."