Chinese Internet search engine Baidu.com (BIDU) has signed a strategic cooperative agreement with Hexun.com to develop Baidu's finance area and offer a better comprehensive financial information service to its users.

According to the agreement, the finance area of Baidu.com will use a joint brand called Baidu-Hexun Finance Website, but the former domain names of Baidu's finance area, including stock.baidu.com, finance.baidu.com and caijing.baidu.com will remain unchanged. About 20 editing staff of Baidu's finance area will be merged into Hexun's human resource system and Hexun.com will invest more professional editing strength in the new website on the base of Baidu's editing team. The core data retrieval system and news cluster system of the website will be managed by a technical team formed by top technicians both from Baidu.com and Hexun.com.

Since 2007 when Baidu.com gained its first online Chinese news license, it started to offer a comprehensive information service which is distinguished by its "search + portal" model. The cooperation of Baidu.com and Hexun.com marks the coming of the large-scale operating stage for "search + portal" and it will open up a new situation for China's finance information service field.

Ren Xuyang, vice president for market and business expansion of Baidu.com, told local media that as one of China's largest and most professional finance information suppliers, Hexun.com has an editing team formed by 300 professional editors in the finance information sector. The company's cooperation with Hexun.com will greatly raise the users overall experience when using Baidu.com to acquire finance information.