Thomson Reuters

Thomson Reuters
Founded	Founded in London in 1851
Headquarters	London
Key People	James C. Smith, President and Chief Executive Officer; Stephen J. Adler, Editor-In-Chief, Reuters News, Executive Vice President News, Thomson Reuters
Website	www.reuters.com

Thomson Reuters is an international multimedia news agency. Reuters Group plc was an international financial market data provider and "wire" news service provider to the media, both broadcast and print. In April of 2008, Thomson Corporation, a major provider of electronic financial, medical and legal data, officially completed its takeover of Reuters with a $16.6 billion transaction. To heighten the company’s profile, its operational headquarters were moved from Stamford, Conn., to the Reuters building on Times Square in Manhattan.

Background

The company has upwards of 2,400 editorial staff, journalists, photographers and camera operators in 196 bureaus in approximately 131 countries. Though known for its deep and long roots in the news business, Reuters, in fact, derives a smaller portion of revenue from that piece of its total business than any other division. In its third quarter revenue statement, it reported revenues of £402 million from Sales & Trading, £92 million from Research & Asset Management, £109 million from its Enterprise Division, and £43 million from its Media Division. More than 90% of Reuters revenue derives from its financial services business. According to Reuters, about 370,000 financial market professionals working in the equities, fixed income, foreign exchange, money, commodities and energy markets around the world use Reuters products.

Products and Services

For financial professionals

• Commodities & Energy
• Exchange Traded Instruments
• FX & Money Markets
• Fixed Income
• Post Trade Services
• Algorithmic Trading
• Hedge Funds
• Research & Asset Management
• Trade & Risk Management
• Regulatory Compliance - MiFID
• Enterprise Information
• Information Management
• Enterprise Data Management - EDM
• Enterprise Connectivity

For corporations Desktop and feed solutions:

• Global market data and news delivered in real-time
• Broker and independent research
• Detailed company information
• Aggregated industry and market views
• Tools for workflow
• FX pricing and execution capabilities

For news media

• Newswires
• Pictures
• Video
• Online Syndication
• News Graphics

In March of 2012, it was announced that Thomson Reuters Elektron would be used to power the index data business for the Dow Jones indexes, supplying real-time, low-latency direct feeds for U.S. index constituent prices, along with corporate actions and company fundamentals to support research and market-moving index calculations for indexes like the DJIA.

On July 1, 2014, Thomson Reuters announced it had acquired UBS Convertible Indices, a widely used benchmark in the convertible bond market, and rebranded the product as Thomson Reuters Convertible Indices. The indices will be integrated with existing Thomson Reuters products and services for the convertible bond market and its suite of indices.

History

Just prior to founding Reuters in 1851, Paul Julius Reuter found a niche delivering the latest news and information using the fastest technology available. In 1850 the technology was a fleet of 45 pigeons that would deliver news and stock prices between Brussels and Aachen, Germany within two hours, beating the railroad by six hours. Today Reuters supplies real-time data on 5.5 million financial records including equities, bonds and derivatives from 258 exchanges and over-the-counter markets. The company provides historical information on over 40,000 companies. In addition, on average 30,000 headlines, including third party contributions, and over eight million words are published daily in countries around the world.

Besides serving the financial markets, Reuters information and news is used by the media worldwide, businesses and individuals. The company is the most read news source on the Internet reaching million in their offices, homes and PDAs.

Milestones over the years

• 1851: Paul Julius Reuter, a German born immigrant, arrived in London from Aachen where he had been running a news and stock price information service using a combination of technology including telegraph cables and a fleet of carrier pigeons that grew to exceed 200. This helped Reuter establish an enviable reputation for speed, accuracy, integrity and impartiality. Reuter opened an office with the help of an 11 year-old office boy in London's financial centre, located close to the main telegraph offices. There he transmitted stock market quotations and news between London and Paris over the new Dover-Calais submarine telegraph cable, using his "telegraph expertise."

• 1858: Offices opened all over Europe, following Paul Julius' maxim, "follow the cable".

• 1865: After 12 days crossing the Atlantic, a Reuters report of the assassination of President Lincoln reaches London first, throwing European financial markets into turmoil. Reuter intercepted the mail boat off Ireland and telegraphed the news to London.

• 1865: 'Reuters Telegram Company' goes public and is registered as a limited company.

• 1870s: Continued expansion in to the Far East and America. Signs an agreement with Havas and Wolff to establish a worldwide news ring.

• 1878: Paul Julius Reuter retires at 61 due to 'failing health'. He died in 1899 at his home in Nice, France.

• 1916: Reuters reconstructed as a private company - Reuters Ltd.

• 1918: In several parts of the world, Reuters is ahead of the British Government in reporting the Armistice which ended the First World War.

• 1923: Reuters develops the use of radio to transmit news internationally and starts a service of price quotations and exchange rates sent in Morse Code by long-wave radio to Europe. In the next few years, this grows into Reuters chief commercial service in Europe and, later, using more powerful radio transmitters, in the rest of the world.

• 1941: Reuters restructures itself so that it is owned by the British National and Provincial Press, together with (in 1947) the Press Associations of Australia and New Zealand. The Reuters Trust Principles were put in place to safeguard its independence. The principles govern how the company conducts business, committing Reuters to independence, integrity and freedom from bias in the gathering and dissemination of news and information

• 1956: Reuters first with the news of Khrushchev denouncing Stalin.

• 1964: Reuters helps to lead the way in transmitting market quotations by computer. In that year, Reuters made a loss of £53,000 on a turnover of £3.5 million.

• 1970: Videomaster introduced - screen display of stock and commodity prices (Left to Right, Stockmaster and Videomaster)

• 1973: Reuter Monitor Money Rates Service launched, an electronic marketplace for Foreign Exchange, a major world innovation. Major western industrialised countries abandoned fixed exchange rates.

• 1971: In New York, Reuters starts its first video editing system. Journalists use VDUs instead of typewriters to write and transmit news.

• 1981: Reuters Monitor Dealing Service goes live - foreign currency dealers are able to conclude trades over video terminals. Again, a world first.

• 1984: Reuters becomes publicly-quoted company on the London Stock Exchange and NASDAQ as Reuters Holdings PLC (Left: London Stock Exchange Flotation)

• 1986, completes acquisition of Instinet, today the world's largest electronic agency brokerage firm. Reuters also launches an international news picture service (1985).

• 1987: Reuters launches Equities 2000 quotations service on Integrated Data Network (IDN) - a global 'highway for data'.

• 1989: Reuters first with the news of the fall of the Berlin Wall. Reuters had also been first with the news of it being built in 1961. Reuters maintained an office in East Berlin for 30 years.

• 1992: Reuters launches Dealing 2000, acting as a broker for the first international computerised matching service for foreign exchange rates.

• 1994: Reuters Financial Television Service for the financial markets is launched, providing traders live coverage of market moving events on their trading screens.

• 1995: Reuters Greenhouse Fund is set up to invest in hi-tech start-ups giving Reuters access to new technologies.

• 1996: Reuters launches the 3000 series, a package of Securities, Treasury and Money products giving customers access to a historical information as well as real-time news and data.

• 1998: Reuters acquires Lipper Analytical Services, a leading fund performance measurement company, and Liberty, a company specialising in order routing and management, in moves opening the way for Reuters to develop these two areas of business.

• 1999: Reuters completes its euro currency conversion programme, involving 4 billion changes affecting a quarter of a million financial instruments. Some 700 engineers, developers, data specialists and customer service staff worked 300 man-years on the project and cost £10 million.

• 1999: Reuters and Dow Jones announce agreement to combine their interactive business services for the corporate and professional markets in a joint venture called Factiva.

• 2000: Reuters announces major initiatives to exploit the Internet and open new markets, reinforced by Joint Ventures in communications, wireless delivery and investment research.

• 2002: Reuters launches Reuters Messaging, a reliable, high-security, high-speed instant messaging service developed specifically for the global financial services industry. Developed by Reuters and Microsoft and more than 30 financial institutions, the service allows financial professionals to communicate instantly with their colleagues and customers.

• 2003: Reuters launches Reuters Knowledge opening up a new market on the buy-side of the financial services industry.

• 2005: Reuters takes major steps into next generation trading with the launch of: Partnership with Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME), linking sell-side traders in the interbank FX market to CME eFX market; Reuters Trading for Fixed Income; Reuters Trading for Foreign Exchange.

• 2006: Reuters launches the first news bureau in the virtual world of Second Life.

• 2006: Reuters launches two products that allow its news output to be "read" by machines for the purposes of automated trading for the first time.

• 2006: Reuters and Chicago Mercantile Exchange form FXMarketSpace, a 50/50 venture that creates the first centrally cleared OTC foreign exchange (FX), combining the central counterparty model and clearing function of CME Group and fully anonymous execution with Reuters' global distribution network and straight-through processing capability. It was shuttered on Oct. 17, 2008.

• 2013: On July 3, The New York Times reported that Reuters was expected to suspend its practice of allowing an exclusive group of investors to pay a large premium to receive the results of the consumer confidence index survey two seconds before its broader release.

Key People

• James C. Smith, President and Chief Executive Officer
• Stephen J. Adler, Editor-In-Chief, Reuters News, Executive Vice President News, Thomson Reuters
• Stephane Bello, Chief Financial Officer
• David W. Craig, President - Financial & Risk
• Robert D. Daleo, Vice Chairman
• Chris Kibarian, President - Intellectual Property & Science
• Brian Peccarelli, Co-COO
• Neil Masterson, Co-COO
• James T. Powell, Chief Technology Officer
• Shanker Ramamurthy, President - Global Growth & Operations
• Deirdre Stanley, General Counsel
• Michael Suchsland, President - Legal
• Peter Warwick, Chief People Officer