Dow Jones 'Watchlist' Offers Biz Protection

By: Mark Fitzgerald It's a dangerous world out there for American businesses, the ads for Dow Jones Watchlist suggest. "How to Tell Your Best Customer from Your Worst Nightmare," one begins. "Win the battle against bribery, money laundering and terrorist financing with Dow Jones."

Since just before the 9/11 terror attacks of 2001, the parent company of The Wall Street Journal has been repurposing news content and other information for an unusual product ? a service that warns businesses if their potential foreign partner could put them in violation of U.S. trade sanctions or anti-bribery laws. Dow Jones Watchlist tracks U.S. and international sanction lists, but also persons linked to high-profile crime and senior foreign political figures, along with their relatives and friends.

And the key to the service, says Rupert de Ruig, managing director of Dow Jones Risk & Compliance, is information dug up by journalists of the Wall Street Journal and other newspapers here and abroad: "Journalists are our lifeblood. Without journalists, Watchlist would be bollocks, it couldn't be done without strong journalism that we need for an open and free society. And that's what we rely on to build our product."

It turns out in this area of tracking business risk ? compiling information, for instance, on so-called PEPs (politically exposed persons) and the associates who may be abetting their crimes or corruption ? newspapers retain a decided advantage over the Web. "While there is lots of very interesting information on the Internet, we never use blogs or Wikis or things like that, because we just can't trust it enough," de Ruig reveals. "A journalist has skin in the game ? you have to make sure your facts are accurate and up-to-date."

A popular feature of Watchlist is tracking and creating profiles of people "of special interest" ? which is "a euphemism for dodgy," de Ruig notes. The intent is not to wave companies away from doing business with them, just make them aware of who they're dealing with.

Watchlist began under the much blander name Factiva Public Figures and Associates. "It wasn't our idea," de Ruig says of the service. "Like most good ideas, it came from the market." Dow Jones was approached by the Swiss financial services firm UBS. "They said we had the necessarily skills, with our access to information and a journalistic network, plus our linguistic and research expertise through Factiva," de Ruig recalls. When Dow Jones bought the controlling interest in Factiva a little more than a year ago, it changed the name to Watchlist.

In December, at the request of some New York-based Watchlist customers, Dow Jones rolled out another risk product that relies on repurposing the news reporters generate ? the Dow Jones Anti-Corruption global database. "Watchlist focuses on who is getting the bribes, and carrying out the corruption," de Ruig says. "Now we'll focus on violators of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act ? and who's paying the corruption."

Dow Jones Anti-Corruption allows senior executives to verify information from their employees and third-party contractors, screen the employees or business partners, and audit company records against the database. "Knowing the true background of your business partners, clients and contractors is becoming especially important as authorities begin to investigate if the anti-corruption 'tone at the top' of an organization is actually being implemented in practice," de Ruig says.

And with this product, too, he adds, "It's thanks to the journalists that we get that data."