Summary 

• RNS supports the listed companies in communicating with the investors across the world.
• The concept of market communication began way back in the year 1698 at a very small scale.
• More than 70% of the listed companies in the UK get their key information published and distributed via RNS.
• At present, RNS delivers more than 1,000 announcements per day, and approximately 300,000 announcements per year.

The Regulatory News Service is part of the London Stock Exchange, which is responsible for distributing information, regulatory or non-regulatory about the listed companies in the United Kingdom. This service has transitioned from being a paper publication for the business community in London twice a week, to being a huge global platform continuously delivering electronic information to the worldwide financial markets.

The London Stock Exchange is among the oldest stock exchanges in the world and has been providing the investors and companies with detailed key market information for more than 300 years.

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RNS supports these companies in communicating with the investors across the world and complying with their regulatory disclosure obligations under the EU Transparency Directive, with the help of just one partner.

Humble start

This concept of market communication began way back in the year 1698 at a very small scale. This tradition kept growing over the years, and in 1972 the London Stock Exchange and Extel came up with the Market Price Display Service (MPDS). It contained four pages of news covering company summaries, and 16 pages covering a list of market prices.

The trading methods gradually shifted from in-person dealings to telephonic and computerised dealings, and the LSE started to use Edited Text News Service (ETNS) to provide summaries, and Company News Service (CNS) to provide full-text information and announcements to the investors. In 1988, the news service provided by LSE was segmented into two distinct categories. The Commercial Company News Service (CCNS) segment provided the edited service and was eventually sold off. The full-text service segment was rebranded as the Regulatory News Service (RNS), which is the current official news outlet of the LSE.

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New era

The advanced technology has enabled the companies to electronically submit the announcements to RNS, and has increased its global reach and accessibility. Introducing Direct Input Provider (DIP) and submission via computers has significantly helped the companies to communicate with the key vendors and investors in the market. To enhance the idea of safe and secure corporate commutations over the internet, the RNS Internet Services were launched in the year 2000. Over the years, RNS has been continuously evolving its technology platform in order to improve its methods of submission, and also upgrade the display of the announcement content, including XHTML formatting of data. This upgradation led to the introduction of a superior conversion tool by RNS in 2010, which further increased the convenience of companies to deliver their announcements to the market audience, using the specific formats and styles of their choice.

Currently, more than 70% of the listed companies in the UK get their key information published and distributed via RNS. These companies include FTSE100, FTSE250, AIM, and Specialist Fund Market companies etc. In addition to these, it also covers approximately 40% of SEC filings relating to UK-listed companies. The information that is distributed by RNS consists of any significant details that may have an influence on the share prices of the companies. RNS ensures that transparency of information is maintained in the global financial markets, and it communicates all the announcements to the markets through news outlets, like Dow Jones, Thomson Reuters, and Bloomberg etc.

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Many companies choose to deliver the important announcements through an RNS feed on their own websites. This gives a sense of security to the market investors that the information is independently published and is not out of date. RNS helps the investors in informed decision making, and recognizing profitable investment opportunities, by just using the name of the company name or a Legal Entity Identifier code (LEI). At present, RNS delivers more than 1,000 announcements per day, and approximately 300,000 announcements per year.