Backchat - Flashback. May 2001. We delve into our archives to find out who and what were making the headlines in our pages four years ago, in the month that Tony Blair won his second landslide.

WMRC gets motoring into the global automotive market

Four years ago, as New Labour was returned with a second landslide victory, there was a strangely haunting echo of today's state of the nation in our lead cover story. "WMO sights car industry" boomed the front page, an exclusive scoop illustrated with a photo of robots on an MG Rover production line. Today, the Rover robots are silent, the workers redundant, Asian car manufacturers vie for the rights to the technology, and the British car industry is all but over. Our story concerned the launch of another vertical market intelligence service from the World Markets Research Centre (WMRC), a service boasting "over 100 company profiles covering virtually every major car, component and commercial vehicle manufacturer in the world". We wonder what the WMO service had to say back then about the prospects of the Rover Group four years forward? WMRC was acquired by Global Insight in 2003, and is now all but absorbed by it. Who'd have expected all this to have come to pass within 48 months.

Wolters Kluwer eyes internet with SilverPlatter purchase

We reported on the purchase of medical and scientific database publisher SilverPlatter by Holland's Wolters Kluwer (WK). It was confirmation that WK wanted to pursue wider online ambitions, planning to merge SilverPlatter with Ovid Technologies. The "fit" was a good one, we concluded: "SilverPlatter is strong in the scientific market, while Ovid's strength lies with medical audiences; SilverPlatter has a strong market presence in Europe, while Ovid is strongest in the US". SilverPlatter was the latest purchase in a buying spree that had seen WK gain ...