Description How to focus on the relevant while making financial decisions in a world of information overkill? – Ask FIRST firstThe FIRST project provides an information extraction, information integration and decision making infrastructure for information management in the financial domain. This area is extraordinarily faced with the challenges of extremely large, dynamic, and heterogeneous sources of information. The daily work and the business success of all decision makers in this industry depend on the availability of highly trustable, easily acquirable information.Within the international financial industry not only individual market participants are negatively affected by information overflow and information asymmetries, but also financial flows and financial stability within entire industries of the global economy. This may also have severe consequences as has been observed in the current financial and economic crisis. Information is amongst the most valuable assets in the financial industry and reducing information asymmetries and increasing transparency by providing a fast, real-time, automatic and more comprehensive information base can help preventing false decisions.