£700,000 Invested in mergermarket.com

NewMedia SPARK PLC
5 January 2000


   NewMedia SPARK invests £700,000 for a minority stake
                    in mergermarket.com

NewMedia SPARK plc ('SPARK') announces that it has invested
£700,000  for  a  35%  equity  stake  in  mergermarket.com.
mergermarket.com, which is expected to launch in the second
quarter   of  this  year,  will  provide  a  community   of
information   and   interaction  for   European   M   &   A
practitioners.   The  company  will  be  built  around  the
management  buyout  of  an existing  financial  information
database   business  from  the  Financial  News  and   will
initially  be  incubated by SPARK in their new  offices  in
Soho.

Commenting  on  the  investment Andrew Curruthers,  COO  of
SPARK said:

'mergermarket.com  is  an attractive business  to  business
opportunity serving a customer base prepared to pay for the
delivery of timely and accurate financial information.  Two
of  the  founders,  Casper Hobbs and  Charlie  Walsh,  have
already built a successful business in their former careers
at  the  Financial News and the third, Gawn Rowan-Hamilton,
is  an experienced professional from the Investment Banking
industry.  They now seek to broaden the product offering to
provide   a  complete  range  of  services  for   M   &   A
professionals and deliver these services via  the  internet
on a subscription basis.'

mergermarket.com is the tenth investment by SPARK since its
shares  began trading on the Alternative Investment  Market
on  28th  October 1999.  Its previous investments  were  in
watchmyprice.com,        crocus.co.uk,        Hotbox.co.uk,
Skillvest.com,  easier!,  Digital  Animations  Group   plc,
Bridge4u.com, Linkguard and Synaptics


For further information please contact:

NewMedia SPARK                   0171 887 4510
Michael Whitaker                 0468-555944

Buchannan Communications
Lisa Baderoon                    0171 466 5000

Peel Hunt & Company
David Davies                     0171 418 8900