The Regulatory News Service (RNS), the London Stock Exchange's company filings system, has managed to hold its lead in distributing price-sensitive news, but it is facing stiffer competition from competitors than ever before.

The stock exchange system sent 85% of announcements from London-listed companies between May and August this year, according to new data from Knowledge Technology Solutions, a data vendor. The other 15% were sent by six competing services - known as primary information providers (Pips) - which were selected to be news distributors by the UK Financial Services Authority when RNS lost its monopoly on April 15.