Asian money and company statistics are fast becoming a commodity as foreign investors look for a slice of the region's booming markets. Two new services, Asian Research Bank (ARB) and inasia.com, have been launched to satiate this demand for information. ARB, developed by the Investext Group, a division of Thomson Financial Services in Boston, Massachusetts, is a collection of investment research reports on Asia-Pacific companies, industries and economies. Reports are scanned on to CD-Roms, that are produced at least once a month. In the company's database there are 14,000 reports, 2,300 companies in 17 countries and 58 investment research contributors. The target industries are mainly financial, but also include librarians and news and magazine publishers. The service will cost US$850 per month on a one-year subscription, with 1,800 print pages per year, after which each page costs $5. There is an additional $100 charge per archive CD-Rom. To be able to use the disk, a company must have an IBM-compatible computer with a 386 or higher processor, a CD-Rom drive and laser printer. The other new service is inasia.com, which lists more than 600,000 companies in 22 Asian countries, with plans to have more than one million companies listed by the end of this year. The service provides search material by company name, product or service and country. The site is free to access through the Internet, with basic listings and the ability to upgrade.
