Managers at technology group Dialog Corporation have agreed to sell the bulk of the company to Canadian media giant Thomson Corporation for £174 million.

The sale follows a tough period for Dialog since being saddled with massive debts from the 1997 takeover of parts of American electronic news and data group Knight Ridder Information.

Dialog will be able to rid itself of its debts and be reinvented as an internet company. Thomson will take control of Dialog's information services arm, which provides electronic financial, scientific, legal and professional data and news online.

Dialog's Stock Exchange listing will be taken up with a new company named Bright Station, which will be headed by the company's colourful current chief executive and founder Dan Wagner.

The new business will include Dialog's web solutions division and e-commerce operations. It will be boosted by a £27.9 million investment, £15.9 million of which is an equity injection from Thomson.

The group has also arranged licensing agreements with the Canadian company. Dialog said the Bright Station arm would also be forming an internet start-up investment division, boasting restaurant entrepreneur and PR guru Matthew Freud on its investment panel.

Matthew Freud is also involved in high-tech investment company Oxygen. Mr Wagner founded Dialog in 1982 under the name of Maid when he was 21-years-old. A Stock Exchange regular in its early years, sentiment changed after the £261 million KRI acquisition.

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