Bloomberg Television, the global financial broadcast network, has signed an international strategic agreement with NDS Group, a News Corp company.

The first interactive broadcast combining Bloomberg's services with NDS' applications will launch on UK's Sky Digital platform in 2002. Other countries will follow next year, says a company release. Key to Bloomberg's strategy is NDS's proven Value@TV suite of applications, an interactive infrastructure for television.

The partnership with NDS, a technology solutions company, will enable Bloomberg, a 24 hour global financial news network, to enhance its interactive services, already deployed in the UK and US cable markets. Initially, says the company, viewers could customize their personal stock portfolios, look up latest share prices, vote on stock market issues, create personalised financial news headlines and view stock market indices, whilst watching the Bloomberg broadcast channel. Future versions may introduce further services by synchronizing activity with the broadcast content and could include options such as fantasy stocks and shares, says the release.

Bloomberg says it chose NDS as its preferred global development supplier as the latter's multi-platform approach to development is in line with Bloomberg's own objectives of rolling-out worldwide interactive services on multiple middlewares, says the company.

NDS is currently a key strategic service provider for broadcasters including MTV, QVC, Discovery Europe, Nickelodeon, Music Choice and the UK's Channel 4 and Teletext.