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Comtex News Network, Inc. (OTC Pink: CMTX) is a distributor of news on the Internet, specializing in the business and financial market sectors.^[1] The company is a wholesaler of electronic real-time news and content gathered from thousands of sources, including national and international news bureaus, agencies and publications (including Business Wire, Dow Jones, McClatchy Information Services, PR Newswire and United Press International). Comtex enhances and standardizes the content received from such sources in order to provide editorially consistent and technically uniform products to its customers. Its processing includes adding stock ticker symbols, indexing by keyword and category and converting diverse publisher materials and formats into the industry standard delivery format NewsML, an XML derivative. The company slogan is "Relevant. Reliable. Real-Time."^[2]

Product areas[link]

The company's product lines include CustomWires, subject-specific newswires including energy, finance, international and public company information; Comtex TopNews, comprising several categories of editorially selected news stories of the day; Publisher Full Feeds, which are deliveries from specific publishers providing their content offerings; and SmarTrend, based on proprietary time-series pattern recognition analysis.^[3] Comtex clients include information distributors such as MarketWatch, Factiva, Bloomberg, and Reuters, websites, corporate intranets and market data applications.

History[link]

Comtex was incorporated in New York in 1980 and operated under the name Academic Micropublishing Company, Inc. until 1981, when the name was changed to Comtex Scientific Corporation. From 1989 until 1991 Infotechnology ("Infotech"), a Delaware business development corporation, then principally engaged in the information and communications business, acquired majority ownership of Comtex.^[4] From 1991 until 2006 AMASYS Corporation, a successor in interests to Infotech, held a majority ownership position, via a combination of stock and debt. In 2006 Comtex repaid all of its outstanding long-term debt and AMASYS sold all its shares.^[5] In late 1999 Comtex changed its name to Comtex News Network, Inc.^[6]

In 2004 Chip Brian joined Comtex as VP, Operations and was named President in 2005 and CEO in 2006.^[3] A new management team was charged with the reducing debt, strengthening the company's financial base and diversifying product lines.

Business structure[link]

Consistent with standard practice in the information aggregation industry, Comtex generally has renewable long-term contractual relationships with those information providers and information distributors with which it does business. Comtex generates revenues primarily from charges to distributors for the licensing of enhanced content, including CustomWires, TopNews products and publishers' full feeds. Royalties are based upon the customers' business and revenue models such that success in their chosen markets generates increasing revenues for Comtex. Fees and royalties from information distributors comprise the majority of Comtex's revenue. Comtex operates and reports in one segment, business information services.^[7]

See also[link]

• Hugin Group

External links[link]

• Comtex website
• SmarTrend website
• SEC Reports

References[link]

Peter von Hahn (1799–1875), member of the Russian nobility, remembered in the United States mainly as the father of Helena Blavatsky.

Early Life and Marriage[link]

Son of Lieutenant-General Alexis Gustavovich von Hahn and Countess Elizabeth Maksimovna von Probsen. Father of Helena Petrovna Blavatsky.

A captain of horse artillery, Peter von Hahn, whose family came originally from the petty nobility of Mecklenburg, married, in 1830, the 16-year old Helene Fadeev. She was the daughter of Princess Helene Dolgoruki (1789-1860) and Andrei Mikhailovich Fadeev (1789-1867), Privy Councillor of the Caucasus, and half his age. Vera, a younger sister of Helene Fadeev, would marry Julius Witte and become the parents to Count Sergei Yulievich Witte.

Polish Campaign and Birth of Helena[link]

Soon after the wedding, the young Captain received orders to join his regiment for service in the notably ruthless campaign to put down the Polish insurrection of 1831. The girl-wife returned to her parents in Ekaterinoslav in the heart of the Ukraine, and it was there that Helena was born on the night of August 12, 1831 (July 30, on the Russian calendar).

Military Life and Death of Wife[link]

At the close of the Polish campaign, Madame Hahn and "Lolo" (her pet name for her daughter Helena), rejoined the Captain at the station in southern Russia where he was leading raids against the mountain tribes of the Caucasus. Captain Hahn had been educated as a member of the Imperial Cadet Corps, limited to the sons of the nobility. On his wife's death, at the age of 28, the Captain, realized that army camps were most unsuitable for little girls. And the two children were escorted back to their grandparents home.

Marriage and Escape of Helena[link]

Colonel Hahn retired, sometime before 1848 and was living near Saint Petersburg when his daughter married Nikifor Blavatsky. This marriage lasted only three months, and Helena ran away, abandoning her husband. Her grandfather promptly shipped her off to her father, but she escaped with a boat captain, "leaving her father fuming on the docks of Odessa". She was not to contact her family for the next ten years. Her future discussions of these years are extremely confused and contradictory and even today have not been satisfactorily explained or researched.

Later life[link]

Shortly afterward, Col Hahn married again to Baroness von Lange and had a daughter Liza. The Baroness died a few years later. Col Hahn was living in 1858 in Saint Petersburg, where Helena's sister Vera was also living, when Helena again showed up. Her sister Vera lived in the small village of Rugodevo, which she had inherited from her late husband. According to reports, Col Hahn was at first aloof from Helena's alleged psychic powers, but later come to believe in them, from certain demonstrations. He died and is buried at Stavropol.

Wives and Children[link]

With Helene Fadeyev

• Helena afterwards Blavatsky, b 1831
• Sasha b 1832 d 1833
• Vera afterwards Vera Zhelihovsky(1835-96)
• Leonid b 1840

With Baroness von Lange

• Liza b 1850/2

Sources[link]

• Priestess of the Occult by Gertrude Marvin Williams, Alfred A Knopf, 1946. OCLC 1162835
• HPB: The Extraordinary Life and Influence of Helena Blavatsky by Sylvia Cranston; G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1993. ISBN 0-87477-688-0
• Biographical notes on Peter von Hahn, etc.
• An Interview with Madame Blavatsky
• Open Questions in H. P. Blavatsky's Genealogy