Agence France Presse (AFP) history

1852: Agence Havas launches an advertising division.

1857: The agency's advertising activities are merged with Société Générale des Annonces.

Others are national newspaper cooperatives, such as the Ritzaus Bureau of Denmark, founded in 1866.

The oldest and largest news agency operating exclusively in Britain is the Press Association, founded by provincial newspapers on a cooperative basis in 1868.

The oldest and largest news agency operating exclusively in Britain is the Press Association, founded by provincial newspapers on a cooperative basis in 1868. It began active work on February 5, 1870, when the postal service took over the private telegraph companies that had previously supplied the provincial papers with news.

The German occupation of France suppressed Agence Havas in 1940, and many of its personnel were active in the underground.

On 20 August 1944, as Allied forces moved on Paris, a group of journalists in the French Resistance seized the offices of the FIO and issued the first news dispatch from the liberated city under the name of Agence France-Presse.

Germany since 1949 has built Deutsche-Presse Agentur into one of the more important news agencies in Europe, including extensive exchange with other national services.

From the major agencies, teletypesetter service, pioneered by the Associated Press in 1951, was available to newspapers wishing to have computerized typesetting done directly from news-service transmissions.

One of them was the first Western journalist to report the death of the Soviet leader Joseph Stalin on 6 March 1953.

AFP was keen to shake off its semi-official status, and on 10 January 1957, the French Parliament passed a law establishing its independence.

In 1982, the agency began to decentralize its editorial decision-making by setting up the first of its five autonomous regional centres, in Hong Kong, then a British dependent territory.

In 1985, the company took steps to modernize its operations, taking into account the developing global realities of the era.

These moves helped improve the company's financial position, boosting revenues to FFr 850 million by 1989, and putting it--temporarily--in the black.

In 1991, AFP set up a joint venture with Extel to create a financial news service, AFX News.

In 1997, AFP made its delayed debut on the Internet, with the launch of a financial information service directed toward the world's stock markets, 'Mine and Yours Trésorie,' in conjunction with leading French broker Groupe Roussin.

In 1999 AFP broke a long tradition when it hired a non-French editor-in-chief, Eric Wishart, a Scotsman.

By the year 2000, PolyCom had extended its network to more than 5,000 stations in over 100 countries.

It was sold in 2006 to Thomson Financial.

In September 2007, the AFP Foundation was launched to promote higher standards of journalism worldwide.

In October 2008, the Government of France announced moves to change AFP's status, including the involvement of outside investors.

On 10 December 2009, the French Culture Minister Frédéric Mitterrand announced that he was setting up a Committee of Experts under former AFP CEO Henri Pigeat to study plans for the agency's future status.

On February 24, 2010, Pierre Louette unexpectedly announced his intention to resign as CEO by the end of March, and move to a job with France Télécom.