Intrum Justitia acquires the Spanish company Via Ejecutiva from Equifax

Intrum Justitia acquires the Spanish company Via Ejecutiva from Equifax Intrum Justitia has signed an agreement to acquire the Spanish and Portuguese debt collection business Via Ejecutiva of Equifax's (NYSE: EFX) subsidiary Equifax Ibérica. "Via Ejecutiva is a well established and leading debt collection company in both Spain and Portugal," said Mr Peter Sjunnesson, CEO of Intrum Justitia. The acquisition is an important extra dimension in our endeavour to offer our clients in Spain and Portugal a broad range of services, all in line with Intrum Justitia's focus on Receivables Management Services (RMS). "We expect to achieve synergistic effects by coordination of our offering to clients, merging some offices and reduction of associated expenses." "This and our recent acquisition of Dun & Bradstreet - with its Iberian operations - now give us a strong foothold in the market," said Mr Luís Salvaterra, head of Intrum Justitia's Iberian operations. "In addition to the agreement to buy Via Ejecutiva, we have outlined an agreement to share data between our companies and also to allow Intrum Justitia to expand its services into general debt collection in Spain and other Equifax operations in Europe." Via Ejecutiva posted revenue of about 2,6 million euros and has approximately 80 employees and 5 offices, the main ones being in Madrid, Barcelona and Lisbon. The company has a strong client base in blue chip companies. For more information: Peter Sjunnesson, CEO Anders Antonsson, Director of Communications Tel: + 46 8 616 77 00, Tel: +4 70 336 78 18 e-mail: p.sjunnesson@nl.intrum.com e-mail: a.antonsson@se.intrum.com Intrum Justitia is one of Europe's leading receivables management services group. The group has a turnover of over 200 million euros and has about 2,500 employees in 20 European countries. Intrum Justitia offers efficient high quality management of commercial and consumer receivables in all phases. Intrum Justitia has a growth strategy and aims to take active part in consolidating its industry. In May 2001, Intrum Justitia acquired Dun &Bradstreet's European receivables management operations. For more information, please visit www.intrum.com Equifax enables and secures global commerce through its information management, consumer credit, marketing services, business information, authentication and e-commerce businesses. As the leader in information services, Equifax adds value wherever customers do business, including the financial services, retail, telecommunications/utilities, information technology and healthcare industries, brokerage, insurance and business lending industries and government. Equifax employs 5,600 in 13 countries and has $1.1 billion in annual revenue. For more information, please visit www.equifax.com. ------------------------------------------------------------ This information was brought to you by Waymaker http://www.waymaker.net The following files are available for download: http://www.waymaker.net/bitonline/2002/01/02/20020102BIT00300/bit0001.doc http://www.waymaker.net/bitonline/2002/01/02/20020102BIT00300/bit0001.pdf