Blogonomics: Morningstar Acquires Footnoted

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Congrats to my friend Michelle Leder, who just sold her site Footnoted.org to Morningstar.

I don’t have the details on the transaction, but my guess is they bought the site for $XX dollars, and they retained Michelle for a salaried post for YY years.

This will give Michelle a sales team and an infrastructure, and allows Morningstar to leverage her name and expertise.

Its probably a good transaction — win-win all around.

Here’s Michelle’s comments:

“One final note about today’s news: While I negotiated mightily for the keys to the Gulfstream, the corporate apartment in Paris, the company yacht, the lifetime consulting contract and, of course, a tax gross up — all crazy perks we’ve written about in various M&A deals — I came up empty handed. That’s because Morningstar doesn’t believe in those sorts of things. Nor do I. Instead, my reward will come if I’m able to grow the footnoted business the way that I envision, which is exactly as it should be and just another reason why I’m so excited to be joining Morningstar.”

I hope you at least got the antique map collection!

Official Morningstar PR Release:

Morningstar, a leading provider of independent investment research, today announced it has acquired the Footnoted business of Financial Fineprint Inc., a privately held firm based in Peekskill, N.Y. The acquisition includes the Footnoted.org website and the Footnoted Pro service. Terms were not disclosed.

Footnoted.org was founded in 2003 by Michelle Leder, author and journalist. Footnoted’s research staff pores over hundreds of SEC filings a day to unearth critical information buried in the fine print, such as evidence of aggressive accounting, excessive compensation, or the type of questionable self-dealing that can indicate more serious problems at a company. With original insight and analysis culled from corporate filings, Footnoted’s free site has become a must-read for professional money managers and analysts, as well as sophisticated individual investors. The company also publishes Footnoted Pro, a service for institutional investors, such as hedge fund firms, that provides insight on actionable items and trends in filings.

Leder will continue to run Footnoted, and Morningstar will make some content from the site available on Morningstar.com, the company’s investment website. In the near future, footnoted.org will become footnoted.com. Additionally, Morningstar will also offer Footnoted Pro to its individual investor, advisor, and institutional clients.”

More later . . .

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Source:
Morningstar Acquires Footnoted.org
CHICAGO, Feb. 9, 2010
Morningstar PR, Inc. (NASDAQ: MORN)