Xinhua Finance to close financial news service

SHANGHAI Dec 17 (Reuters) - Xinhua Finance Ltd (XFL) (9399.T) will close one of its financial news services by the end of this month because of the global economic slump, the Chinese financial information and media firm said on Wednesday.

Xinhua Finance News, which has operations in Beijing, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Taipei and Singapore, will be shut down. It has a staff of about 40 people, a company spokeswoman said.

"With the impact of the global financial crisis on the underlying economy, we reluctantly have to discontinue our news operations and focus on core businesses, namely, index, ratings and financial solutions," chief executive Jae Lie said in a statement.

XFL said it had arranged for another international financial news organisation, which it declined to name, to provide a comparable news feed over a transition period from next month.

Xinhua Finance News contributed less than 1 percent of the group's revenues in the first nine months of 2008, XFL added. Two other XFL services, Market News International and Stone & McCarthy Research Associates, will not be affected, it said.

XFL is a competitor of Thomson Reuters TRIL.L and Bloomberg LP, and has a news and information redistribution deal with Thomson Reuters. (Reporting by Andrew Torchia)