Business Editors

BEDFORD, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Feb. 20, 2004--Interactive Data Corporation (NYSE: IDC) announced that the details of its settlement with shareholders of two Heartland Funds Group mutual funds were filed this afternoon with the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Wisconsin. The Company previously disclosed in December 2003 that it had reached agreement in principle to settle claims advanced by shareholders of the two Heartland high-yield municipal bond funds.

The amount of the settlement is expected to be fully covered by insurance. The overall settlement terms are subject to Court approval and will require the Company to pay $1 million to shareholders of the two Heartland high-yield funds.

Stuart Clark, Interactive Data Corporation's President and Chief Executive Officer, said, "We negotiated this settlement in order to avoid the distraction of potentially protracted litigation that we regarded as being without foundation."

Three and a half years ago, on September 28, 2000 and again on October 13, 2000, the Heartland Funds Group significantly wrote down the net asset value ("NAV") of two high-yield municipal bond funds. Those funds had subscribed to FT Interactive Data's high-yield municipal bond service. The funds made clear in subsequent public filings that the data received from FT Interactive Data were not the cause of their NAV write downs, and the funds never made any claims against either FT Interactive Data or the Company. The shareholders nonetheless pursued a claim against the Company.

About Interactive Data Corporation

Interactive Data Corporation is a leading global provider of securities pricing, financial information, and analytic tools to institutional and individual investors. The Company supplies time-sensitive pricing (including evaluated pricing), dividend, corporate action, and descriptive information for more than 3.5 million securities traded around the world, including hard-to-value instruments. The Company provides many of the world's best-known financial services companies with data that can be used in trading, analysis, portfolio management, and valuation applications.

Interactive Data Corporation is headquartered in Bedford, Massachusetts. Through its branded businesses, FT Interactive Data, ComStock, CMS BondEdge, and eSignal, Interactive Data Corporation has approximately 1,800 employees in offices located throughout North America, Europe, Asia, and Australia. Pearson plc (NYSE: PSO), an international media company, whose businesses include the Financial Times Group, Pearson Education, and the Penguin Group, owns approximately 60 percent of the outstanding common stock of Interactive Data Corporation.

Forward-Looking and Cautionary Statements

This press release contains certain forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, and is subject to the safe-harbor created by such Act. These statements include our statement that we expect the settlement to be fully covered by insurance as well as the statement that the settlement is subject to court approval. These statements are subject to known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause actual results to be materially different from those contemplated by the forward-looking statements. Such factors include, but are not limited to: (i) the presence of competitors with greater financial resources than us and their strategic responses to us, including our products and services; (ii) changes in technology, which could affect the competitiveness of our products and services; (iii) our maintenance of relationships with key suppliers; (iv) a decline in market acceptance of our services or products; and (v) developments in the applicable law. We undertake no obligation to update these forward-looking statements.

    CONTACT: Interactive Data Corporation
             Jeanne Murphy,