Thomson Reuters Corporation is a multinational media and information firm based in New York
City.
It was created by the Thomson Corporation's purchase of British-based Reuters Group on
17 April 2008, and today is majority owned by The Woodbridge Company, a holding company
for the Thomson family.
The company operates in more than 100 countries, and has more than 60,000 employees around
the world.
Thomson Reuters was ranked as Canada's "leading corporate brand" in the 2010 Interbrand Best
Canadian Brands ranking.
It is headquartered at 3 Times Square, Manhattan, New York City.
History The Thomson Corporation
The Company was founded by Roy Thomson in 1934 in Ontario as the publisher of The Timmins
Daily Press.
In 1953 Thomson acquired the Scotsman newspaper and moved to Scotland the following year.
He consolidated his media position in Scotland in 1957 when he won the franchise for Scottish
Television.
In 1959 he bought the Kemsley Group, a purchase that eventually gave him control of the Sunday
Times.
He separately acquired the Times in 1967.
He moved into the airline business in 1965, when he acquired Britannia Airways and into
oil and gas exploration in 1971 when he participated in a consortium to exploit reserves in the
North Sea.
In the 1970s, following the death of Lord Thomson, the Company withdrew from national
newspapers and broadcast media, selling the Times, the Sunday Times and Scottish Television
and instead moved into publishing, buying Sweet & Maxwell in 1988.
The company at this time was known as the International Thomson Organisation Ltd.
In 1989, ITOL merged with Thomson Newspapers, forming The Thomson Corporation.
In 1996 The Thomson Corporation acquired West Publishing, a purveyor of legal research and
solutions including Westlaw.
Reuters Group
The Company was founded by Paul Julius Reuter in 1851 in London as a business transmitting
stock market quotations.
Reuter set up his "Submarine Telegraph" office in October 1851 and negotiated a contract
with the London Stock Exchange to provide stock prices from the continental exchanges
in return for access to London prices, which he then supplied to stockbrokers in Paris,
France.
In 1865, Reuters in London was the first organization to report the assassination of Abraham Lincoln.
The company was involved in developing the use of radio in 1923.
It was acquired by the British National & Provincial Press in 1941 and first listed on the London
Stock Exchange in 1984.
Reuters began to grow rapidly in the 1980s, widening the range of its business products
and expanding its global reporting network for media, financial and economic services:
key product launches included Equities 2000, Dealing 2000-2, Business Briefing, Reuters
Television for the financial markets, 3000 Series and the Reuters 3000 Xtra service.
Post-acquisition The Thomson Corporation acquired Reuters Group
PLC to form Thomson Reuters on April 17, 2008.
Thomson Reuters operated under a dual-listed company structure and had two parent companies,
both of which were publicly listed — Thomson Reuters Corporation and Thomson Reuters PLC.
In 2009, it unified its dual listed company structure and stopped its listing on the London
Stock Exchange and NASDAQ.
It is now listed only as Thomson Reuters Corporation on the New York Stock Exchange and Toronto
Stock Exchange.
In June 2008, it was reported that it would be launching a news channel to rival Bloomberg
TV and CNBC.
This turned out to be false.
The company released Thomson Reuters Eikon in 2011.
On February 13, 2013, Thomson Reuters announced it will cut 2,500 jobs to cut cost in its
Legal, Financial and Risk division.
On October 29, 2013, Thomson Reuters announced it will cut another 3,000 jobs, mostly in
its Legal, Financial and Risk division.
Operations The Chief executive of the combined company
is James C. Smith, who was the chief executive for the Professional Division, and the chairman
is David Thomson, who was the chairman of Thomson.
In late 2011, The company announced a new organizational structure with four divisions:
Financial and Risk Operation: Financial Professionals & Marketplaces
Enterprise Solutions Media
Legal: Formerly North American Legal and Legal & Regulatory;
including West, makers of Westlaw, and Carswell
Intellectual Property & Science: Formerly Thomson Healthcare and Thomson Scientific
Thomson Healthcare and Thomson Scientific were merged, then sold in 2012, and is now
Truven Health Analytics.
Tax & Accounting: Formerly Thomson Tax & Accounting
Thomson Reuters shares are listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange and the New York Stock Exchange.
It competes with Bloomberg L.P., in aggregating financial and legal news.
Market position and antitrust review
The Thomson-Reuters merger transaction was reviewed by the U.S. Department of Justice
and by the European Commission.
On February 19, 2008, both the Department of Justice and the Commission cleared the
transaction subject to minor divestments.
The Department of Justice required the parties to sell copies of the data contained in the
following products: Thomson's WorldScope, a global fundamentals product; Reuters Estimates,
an earnings estimates product; and Reuters Aftermarket Research Database, an analyst
research distribution product.
The proposed settlement further requires the licensing of related intellectual property,
access to personnel, and transitional support to ensure that the buyer of each set of data
can continue to update its database so as to continue to offer users a viable and competitive
product.
The European Commission imposed similar divestments: according to the Commission's press release,
"the parties committed to divest the databases containing the content sets of such financial
information products, together with relevant assets, personnel and customer base as appropriate
to allow purchasers of the databases and assets to quickly establish themselves as a credible
competitive force in the marketplace in competition with the merged entity, re-establishing the
pre-merger rivalry in the respective fields."
These remedies are viewed as very minor given the scope of the transaction.
According to the Financial Times, "the remedy proposed by the competition authorities will
affect no more than $25m of the new Thomson Reuters group’s $13bn-plus combined revenues."
The transaction was cleared by the Canadian Competition Bureau.
In November 2009, The European Commission opened formal anti-trust proceedings against
Thomson Reuters concerning a potential infringement of the EC Treaty's rules on abuse of a dominant
market position.
The Commission investigated Thomson Reuters' practices in the area of real-time market
datafeeds, and in particular whether customers or competitors were prevented from translating
Reuters Instrument Codes to alternative identification codes of other datafeed suppliers to the detriment
of competition.
In December 2012, the European Commission adopted a decision that renders legally binding
the commitments offered by Thomson Reuters to create a new licence allowing customers,
for a monthly fee, to use Reuters Instrument Codes in applications for data sourced from
Thomson Reuters' real time consolidated datafeed competitors to which they have moved.
Purchase process Historically, no single individual has been
permitted to own more than 15% of Reuters, under the first of the Reuters Principles,
which states, "Reuters shall at no time pass into the hands of any one interest, group
or faction."
However, that restriction was waived for the purchase by Thomson, whose family holding
company, the Woodbridge Company currently owns 53% of the enlarged business.
Robert Peston, business editor at BBC News, stated that this has worried Reuters journalists,
both because they are concerned that Reuters' journalism business will be marginalized by
the financial data provision business of the combined company, and because of the threat
to Reuters's reputation for unbiased journalism by the appearance of one majority shareholder.
Pehr Gyllenhammar, chairman of the Reuters Founders Share Company, explained that the
Reuters Trust's First Principle had been waived for the Thomson family because of the poor
financial circumstances that Reuters had been in, stating, "The future of Reuters takes
precedence over the principles.
If Reuters were not strong enough to continue on its own, the principles would have no meaning."
He stated, not having met David Thomson but having discussed the matter with Geoff Beattie,
the president of Woodbridge, that the Thomson family had agreed to vote as directed by the
Reuters Founders Share Company on any matter that the trustees might deem to threaten the
five principles of the Reuters Trust.
Woodbridge will be allowed an exemption from the First Principle as long as it remains
controlled by the Thomson family.
Acquisitions In July 2009 Thomson Reuters acquired Streamlogics.
Founded in 1999, Streamlogics is a provider of customizable, high volume, real time data
mining solutions for hundreds of enterprises across several verticals including financial
services, technology and health care/life sciences.
Streamlogics' webcasting solutions are used for training and certification, marketing
and lead generation, and corporate communications.
In August 2009 Thomson Reuters bought Vhayu Technologies.
Vhayu is a provider of tick data services, and Thomson Reuters had been distributing
its Velocity product under the Reuters Tick Capture Engine label for the four years prior
to the acquisition.
On September 21, 2009, Thomson Reuters bought Hugin Group, the European IR and PR distribution
group, from NYSE Euronext.
Terms have not been disclosed, but it has been reported in Danish newspapers that the
price was between €40 million and €42m.
In September 2009, Thomson Reuters bought the Abacus software business from Deloitte,
a provider of corporate taxation software for the U.K., Ireland, the Netherlands, New
Zealand, and Hong Kong, as well as Indirect Tax Reporting software for 20 E.U.
countries.
Terms of the transaction were not disclosed.
In November 2009 The Tax & Accounting business acquired Sabrix, Inc, a global provider of
transaction tax management software applications and related services.
In February 2010 Thomson Reuters acquired Aegisoft LLC to improve their electronic trading
capabilities by offering direct market access.
In May 2010 Thomson Reuters acquired Point Carbon A/S, a Norwegian company that provides
news and trading analytics for the energy and environmental markets.
In October 2010, Thomson Reuters acquired Serengeti Law, a matter management and ebilling
system.
In November 2010, Thomson Reuters acquired the legal process outsourcing provider Pangea3.
Pangea3 serves corporate legal departments and law firms worldwide.
Financial Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
In November 2010, Thomson Reuters acquired the banking data and analytic provider Highline
Financial, and GeneGo, a supplier of systems biology databases, software and services.
In 20 June 2011, Thomson Reuters acquired CorpSmart from Deloitte.
On July 18, 2011 Thomson Reuters acquired Manatron from Thoma Bravo.
In August 2011, Thomson Reuters acquired GFMS.
In December 2011, Thomson Reuters acquired Emochila, a website development firm in the
tax and accounting space, in order to further integrate its CS suite of products onto a
cloud-based platform.
In January 2012, Thomson Reuters acquired Dr Tax, Canada’s largest independently owned
developer of income tax software for accounting firms and consumers.
In February 2012, Thomson Reuters acquired RedEgg, a provider of media intelligence solutions
for public relations and marketing professionals.
In 8 June 2012, Thomson Reuters acquired Apsmart, a London-based company specializing in design
and development of mobile solutions.
In 25 June 2012, Thomson Reuters acquired Zawya Limited, a regional provider of business
intelligence and unique tools for financial professionals in the Middle East and North
Africa . In 10 July 2012, Thomson Reuters acquired
FX Alliance Inc, an independent provider of electronic foreign exchange trading solutions
to corporations and asset managers.
In 26 July 2012, Thomson Reuters announced acquisition of MarkMonitor, a San Francisco-based
company specializing in internet brand protection software and services.
In 16 April 2013, Thomson Reuters acquired Select TaxWorks Assets of RedGear Technologies.
In 6 June 2013, Thomson Reuters acquired Pricing Partners, a provider of OTC Derivatives Pricing
Analytics and independent valuation.
In 2 July 2013, Thomson Reuters acquired the foreign exchange options business of Tradeweb.
In August 16, 2013, Thomson Reuters acquired the foreign exchange options risk management
technology provider SigmaGenix.
In August 18, 2013, Thomson Reuters acquired a majority stage in Omnesys Technologies and
acquired completely the company in September 16, 2013
In September 10, 2013, Thomson Reuters acquired the CPE and CPA Division of Bisk Education
Inc . In September 10, 2013, Thomson Reuters acquired
Kortes . In October 23, 2013, Thomson Reuters acquired
Entagen, acquiring the Cortellis family of products for drug pipeline, deals, patents,
and company content.
. Sponsorships
Thomson Reuters has sponsored Canadian golf champion Mike Weir and the AT&T Williams Formula
One team.
It also sponsors Marketplace, a radio show from American Public Media.
See also
Web of Knowledge Thomson Reuters Citation Laureates
References
Further reading Peter Kaplan.
"Thomson Reuters deal would raise U.S. antitrust issue".
Reuters.
Penny Crosman.
"How Will the Thomson Reuters Marriage Affect Customers?".
Wall Street & Technology.
Ian Austen.
"Combined Thomson Reuters Would Challenge Bloomberg".
New York Times.
Jerry Bowles.
"Reuters using social media software to launch community around environmental markets".
WebPro News.
Ovide, Shira.
"Crunch Time at Thomson Reuters".
Wall Street Journal.
"CEO Glocer Is Under Pressure After Restructuring Backed by Controlling Family".
External links Official website
Reuters Insider Thomson Reuters On Demand
Thomson Reuters Foundation