TradeWeb Launches Advanced Straight-Through Processing for Corporate Bond Market

--First Ever STP Solution for Both Electronic and Phone-Executed Trades-- 

JERSEY CITY (July 15, 2004) - TradeWeb, the leading network of online fixed-income markets, today announced the successful launch of straight-through processing for corporate bond trading. Through TradeXpress, the #1 STP solution for the bond markets, TradeWeb provides full straight-through processing to the credit markets. Regardless of how a corporate bond investor executes a transaction (by phone or electronically) TradeWeb's TradeXpress service allows the trade to be electronically allocated and confirmed over its network that connects more than 27 global dealers to over 1,400 investment management firms worldwide. This launch extends TradeWeb's award winning straight-through processing network into its 10th fixed-income marketplace. More than 1.5 million institutional block trades have been electronically allocated and processed over TradeXpress since it began operation in February 2001.

As the preferred provider of STP services for fixed-income traders, TradeWeb is experiencing a surge in demand for corporate STP among buy-side and sell-side firms. For the first time corporate bond investors can manage all of their trade allocations and confirmations on a single efficient network and eliminate error-prone manually intensive processes. Through TradeXpress buy-side firms, dealers and custodian banks also seamlessly access AccountNetR, the leading standing settlement instruction database and network, to append their corporate trades with validated settlement instructions.

"Being able to electronically allocate and confirm both phone and electronic trades for corporate bonds provides tremendous benefit to JPMorgan Fleming," said Pat Lomelo, Vice President of Operations at JPMorgan Fleming Asset Management. "By incorporating new technologies like TradeXpress and AccountNet, we have streamlined our trade processing, which has resulted in fewer trade errors, more rapid problem resolution and less operational risk."

As the most complete STP solution for fixed-income traders, support for TradeXpress and AccountNet among dealers is strong and growing.

Greg Dabal, Executive Director at Morgan Stanley added "By electronically allocating and confirming trades over TradeXpress, Morgan Stanley and its corporate bond customers can reduce their exposure to trade processing errors which ultimately leads to lower costs and greater efficiency."

TradeWeb STP for corporate bonds is fully integrated into TradeWeb's newly launched corporate bond trading platform. Currently, more than 100 major buy-side firms are active in this new online marketplace for bond analysis, trading, and straight-through processing.

About TradeWeb

TradeWeb is the leading online fixed-income trading network with over 5 million trades executed and total volume of nearly $50 trillion since its inception in 1998. TradeWeb's multi-dealer auction model links 27 of the world's leading dealers of fixed-income securities with more than 1,500 buy-side institutions in North America and Europe.

The company is also the leading electronic "straight-through processing" network for the fixed-income markets, providing dealers and buy-side institutions with paperless trade allocations and confirmations on its fully integrated TradeXpressSM network. TradeWeb's STP network also includes AccountNetR, the leading standard settlement instructions database.

For more information about TradeWeb products and services, please visit the company's website at www.tradeweb.com or contact Jack Mahoney at (201) 536-5878.

About Thomson Financial

TradeWeb is an indirect wholly owned subsidiary of the Thomson Corporation (NYSE:TOC) and operates within the Thomson Financial market group. Thomson Financial is a US$1.5 billion provider of information and technology solutions to the worldwide financial community. Through the widest range of products and services in the industry, Thomson Financial helps clients in more than 70 countries make better decisions, be more productive and achieve superior results. Thomson Financial is part of The Thomson Corporation (www.thomson.com), a leading provider of value-added information, software tools and applications to more than 20 million users in the fields of law, tax, accounting, financial services, higher education, reference information, corporate training and assessment, scientific research and healthcare. With revenues from continuing operations of US$7.6 billion, The Thomson Corporation lists its common shares on the New York and Toronto stock exchanges (NYSE: TOC; TSX: TOC).