BOSTON, MASS. AND ST. PAUL, MINN. — January 17, 2002 — CCBN, a leading provider of Internet-based shareholder communications services, today announced a strategic marketing alliance with Merrill Corporation (www.merrillcorp.com), a global diversified communications and document services provider. The alliance features a unique combination of CCBN’s industry-leading products and services and Merrill’s technology expertise and global ties to the financial community. Additionally, CCBN has acquired certain assets of Merrill’s IR Edge product line, which provides client-controlled investor relations Web site communications. “This relationship demonstrates Merrill’s commitment to extend the highest quality services to our corporate clients while streamlining and enhancing the effectiveness of their financial communications,” explained Mike James, president of Merrill’s Financial Document Services business. “We are now in a position to further expand what has already been the most diverse suite of financial communications services in our industry.” “This alliance is a perfect fit and extends CCBN’s ability to provide our corporate clients with solutions for direct communications with their financial constituents,” said Rob Adler, president and co-founder of CCBN. “We look forward to partnering with Merrill to deliver the industry’s leading array of communications services.” Jeff Parker, CEO and co-founder of CCBN, agreed. “Through alliances and acquisitions like this, we continue to strengthen our leadership position in the industry,” he said. “In combination with our StreetFusion acquisition this October, CCBN now services the online needs of more than 3,000 publicly-traded corporations around the world.” Merrill’s IR Edge clients will now have access to the complete suite of services CCBN offers to financial and investor relations (IR) professionals including IR Web site design and management, targeted messaging, mail fulfillment and interactive voice response. Clients will benefit not only from these industry-leading online IR services, but also from CCBN’s webcasting services and its powerful Investor Distribution Network. This vast network of the top institutional and individual investment portals leverages IR and corporate communications efforts by putting this information directly into the hands of millions of investors. Through CCBN’s StreetEvents service and a host of leading institutional portals including Bloomberg and BRIDGE, hundreds of thousands of institutional investors have access to a master calendar of upcoming conference calls, earnings releases, live and archived webcasts, shareholder meetings and other investment-related events sourced directly from more than 6,000 public companies and 100 sell-side institutions. CCBN also provides individual investors with access to straight-from-the-company information through Web syndication relationships with more than 20 top financial sites including AOL Personal Finance, BusinessWeek Online, The Motley Fool, Yahoo! Finance and others. CCBN’s clients will have access to Merrill’s array of financial printing technology products and services. Merrill’s services allow financial and legal documents to be managed, shared, revised, distributed and even translated into other languages over the Internet or within their global network. CCBN will gain access to Merrill’s typesetting and printing network and will tap Merrill’s experience of integrating technology to best serve customers. CCBN and Merrill will work closely on bringing to market new services for public companies to further enhance clients’ financial and corporate communications.