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Reuters to float Web fund?
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January 19, 2000: 4:56 a.m. ET
Report: information provider mulls flotation of Instinet, Net start-up fund
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LONDON (CNNfn) - Reuters plans a public offering of shares in its Internet start-up fund to try to highlight the company's investments in new media companies, according to a press report Wednesday.
The electronic information provider will float 25 percent of its four-year-old fund, known as the Greenhouse Fund, which has invested in 38 new media companies, according to the Financial Times.
As well as Greenhouse, the company is also mulling a partial flotation of its Instinet online trading business. The FT said Instinet might have a value of more than 3 billion pounds ($4.9 billion).
Some of Greenhouse's investments have already sold shares on public exchanges - 11 of the 38 companies according to the newspaper - and Reuters' stakes in listed companies are reported to have an aggregate value of more than $500 million. The fund has invested some $100 million in new companies.
Reuters began the fund "to learn about what was happening in the Internet space," according to a source close to the company, and didn't anticipate that the fund would bring a financial windfall. In 1998 Reuters recorded capital gains of 26 million pounds from the fund, rising to 29 million pounds in the six months to the end of June 1999.
The flotations could be part of the news firm's new Internet strategy, which it is due to unveil in early February along with its full-year results for 1999.
Reuters officials refused to comment on the report Wednesday.
Greenhouse has invested in some high-profile Web companies, including Yahoo!, (YHOO) search engine Lycos and CBS Sportsline.
Fears over the impact of new digital media on Reuters' traditional financial information business dogged the company's stock price last year, but a surge in optimism about the firm's prospects has seen the shares recover in recent months.
In early London trade Wednesday Reuters (RTR) shares dipped 1.7 percent to 1,008 pence. 
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Reuters
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