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New York - There  was news today that Gerson Lehrman Group and Morgan Stanley Alphawise would jointly offer enhanced services to clients beginning in April, 2008. Alphawise is a primary research platform that enables researchers to access several forms of primary research, including access to experts, market research and webscrapers to generate, test and confirm investment theses. The agreement adds together the preeminent expert network service (GLG) with Alphawise's focussed tool sets to provide a full-service primary research product suite. The product will cover the technology, healthcare and retail sectors.

The agreement is one of a number of sell-side initiatives to enhance the quantity and quality of their research offerings, through agreements or minority ownership positions in alternative research providers, in a bid to grow or maintain client usage and loyalty.

There has been an ever increasing interest in primary research over the past several years. As a result, Integrity has recently published a ResearchFocus covering expert networks and is working on a subsequent ResearchFocus on channel checking firms.

The press release follows:

NEW YORK, March 27, 2008 /PRNewswire via COMTEX/ — Gerson Lehrman Group, the world's leading marketplace for expertise, and Morgan Stanley's AlphaWise, a group conducting customized primary research for investment managers, today announced an agreement to provide integrated research services to clients of GLG starting in April.

Through this collaboration, GLG clients will be able to leverage AlphaWise's functional expertise to help investigate key investment issues, gather investment intelligence through GLG's expert network, and create proprietary views. The partnership represents a new and strengthened way of providing investment managers and other decision-makers with an enhanced level of customized research from two leaders in their respective fields of primary research and expert networks. With its strong background in primary research, Morgan Stanley's AlphaWise team will be available to assist GLG clients in the retail, healthcare, and technology sectors.

"This partnership allows Gerson Lehrman Group to offer an additional customized service to our customers, one that leverages Morgan Stanley's highly experienced research capabilities. I look forward to introducing our clients to Morgan Stanley's AlphaWise as another exciting way to provide decision-makers, in all industries, with unique technology and services to find, engage, and manage experts," said Alexander Saint-Amand, President and Chief Executive Officer, Gerson Lehrman Group.

"By combining Alphawise's unique research techniques with the unparalleled Gerson Lehrman Group technology and expert membership, we will provide busy analysts and portfolio managers with an effortless means to execute high-value customized primary research," said Juan-Luis Perez, Global Director of Research, Morgan Stanley.