Sales 2023: $ 6.794 billion (€6.283 billion)

Overview

The Canadian-British media group emerged in April 2008 from a merger of the information service provider Thomson and the long-established British news agency Reuters. The result is the world's largest provider of specialized communications services. Its offerings are aimed at business customers in the economy and financial industries, as is the case with its main competitor Bloomberg. The traditional news agency business remains a key pillar of the company.

General Information

Headquarters
Bay Adelaide Centre
333 Bay Street, Suite 300
Toronto, Ontario M5H 2R2
Canada
Telephone 001 416 687 7500
Website: ir.thomsonreuters.com

Branches of trade: Financial information, news agency
Legal form: Stock Company
Financial year: 01.01. – 31.12.
Founding year:  1851 (founding of Reuters); 1934 (Roy Thomson acquires his first newspaper, "The Timmins Press"); 2008 (Thomson Corp. acquires the British Reuters Group)

Basic economic data (in US$ million)

	2023	2022	2021	2020	2019	2018
Revenue	6.794	6.627	6.348	5.984	5.906	5.501
Operating Profit	2.332	1.834	1.242	1.929	1.199	780
Stock price (year end)	143,93	114,07	119,62	81,89	72,60	47,61
Employees	25.600	25.200	24.400	24.400	24.400	25.800

Executives and Directors

Management:

• Steve Hasker, President & Chief Executive Officer
• Michael Eastwood, Chief Financial Officer Stéphane Roussel, Chief Operating Officer
• Thomas Kim, Chief Legal Officer and Company Secretary
• Shawn Malhotra, Head of Engineering
• Brian Peccarelli, Chief Operating Officer, Customer Markets
• Kirsty Roth, Chief Operations and Technology Officer
• Mary Alice Vuicic, Chief People Officer
• David Wong, Chief Product Officer
• Elizabeth Beastrom, President, Tax & Accounting Professionals 
• Paul Fischer, Legal Professionals
• Alessandra Galloni, Editor-in-Chief, Reuters News
• Jennifer Prescott, President, Global Print
• Steve Rubley, President, Government

 Board of Directors:

• David Thomson (Chairman), Thomson Reuters, The Woodbridge Company Ltd.
• Steve Hasker, President and CEO 
• Kirk E. Arnold, Executive-in-Residence, General Catalyst Ventures
• David W. Binet, Thomson Reuters, The Woodbridge Company Ltd.
• Ed Clark, Corporate Director
• LaVerne H. Council, CEO, Emerald One, LLC
• Michael E. Daniels, Corporate Director
• Kirk Koenigsbauer, Chief Operating Officer and Corporate Vice President, Microsoft
• Deanna Oppenheimer, Founder, CameoWorks
• Simon Paris, CEO, Finestra
• Kim M. Rivera, Chief Legal and Business Affairs Officer, OneTrust
• Barry Salzberg, Corporate Director
• Peter J. Thomson, The Woodbridge Company Ltd.
• Beth Wilson, Corporate Director

History

The foundation for Thomson was laid in 1934: Canadian Roy Thomson (1894–1976) acquired his first newspaper, the Timmins Press from Ontario. In the decades that followed, he built Canada's largest newspaper group. From the 1950s onwards, he invested in Great Britain, his adopted homeland. First, in 1959, he bought the Kemsley Group, which included the influential regional newspaper The Scotsman. In 1967, he acquired the crown jewel of the British newspaper landscape, the London daily The Times. The 1970s were marked by a foray into the oil business, when Thomson participated in the development of an oil field in the North Sea. At this time, his son Kenneth (1923–2006) took over management. In the early 1980s, the company turned to information trading and continually expanded these activities. With the acquisition of specialized information services in the areas of law, health, science, and finance, as well as database companies, a new corporate profile gradually emerged. Thomson's involvement in the British newspaper market ended in 1995. Thomson had already sold The Times to Murdoch's News International Ltd. in 1981.

CEO Richard Harrington continued the restructuring from 1997 onwards – away from print and towards electronic information services and database systems. The goal was a leaner, more focused company. Divisions that no longer fit the concept were divested, as was the case with the sale of the tourism division Thomson Travel in 1998. Within six years, Harrington sold 130 newspapers and over 60 subsidiaries. Since most of the branches were profitable at the time, at the height of the New Economy boom, Thomson had a lot of money after the sales. Initially, dozens of other information services in the areas of law, tax, accounting, education, finance, science, and healthcare were acquired. And in 2007, Thomson made a takeover offer for the Reuters news agency for 17.6 billion US dollars. Reuters was founded over 80 years before the Thomson Corporation was founded and was one of the most important, longest-established news agencies in the world. At the time of the merger, however, Reuters generated only slightly more than ten percent of its revenue from traditional news. Institutional clients in the financial sector, who receive financial data via special terminals, accounted for the majority of its business.

The Reuters story had a curious beginning: In the mid-19th century, the German Paul Julius Reuter (1816-1899) exploited a gap in the telegraph network between Aachen and Brussels to send information using carrier pigeons. When the telegraph line was completed, Reuter opened an office in London in 1851 and operated his information business from there via the Calais-Dover submarine cable. In the following decades, Reuters expanded and supplied British newspapers with news, initially from offices throughout Europe, later from all over the world. During the world wars, Reuters reports were censored by the British government, prompting the owners to establish the Reuters Trust in 1941 to ensure the agency's independence. The trust's principles prohibited holdings of more than 15 percent. Furthermore, since its IPO in 1984, the Reuters Founders Share Company Ltd. held a "golden share," which conferred veto rights over decisions made by the general meeting. These principles were intended to ensure non-partisanship and independence.

Reuters was also able to strengthen its position in the international news market through early adoption of new technologies. From 1923, news was transmitted by radio, from 1961 by satellite, and from 1971 by computer link. Reuters expanded in the 1990s – a strategy that caused problems after the end of the dot.com boom at the beginning of the new millennium. The offering had become too complex; customers canceled Reuters terminals in droves, which were considered inflexible. Reuters made profits but increasingly lost market share to its main competitor, Bloomberg. Furthermore, the Reuters brand was little known in the United States, and the company soon slipped into the red for the first time since its IPO in 1984.

The Thomson-Reuters merger was controversial under competition law. The group, together with Bloomberg, would control two-thirds of the market, arguing that a duopoly would emerge. Surprisingly, the review by the European Commission, the competent European antitrust authority, which had been ongoing since October 2007, was lenient despite "significant concerns." A key concession was the sale of various databases to competitors. The integration of Reuters into the Thomson Group was slow, as the April 2008 merger took place during the global financial and banking crisis of 2007/08. In the wake of the crisis, fewer and fewer investment firms and fund managers were willing to pay large sums for Reuters financial information and market analysis. In addition, thousands of employees at banks and financial institutions were laid off, many of them subscribers to Thomson Reuters' specialist information.

Following the merger, the Thomson family, through its investment arm Woodbridge, held 53 percent of the shares. This necessitated a change to the Reuters principles, which originally only permitted individual shareholders a maximum stake of 15 percent. Following the amendment to the articles of association, the independence principles of the Reuters Trust applied to the entire new company. The Thomson Reuters Founders Share Company, which emerged from the Reuters Founders Share Company and oversees compliance with the Trust's principles of ensuring independence, retains, like its predecessor, a veto right against takeover attempts through the so-called "golden share."

As can be seen from the revenue and employee figures, which virtually halved between 2016 and 2018: "2018 was a watershed year for our company": 2018 was a year of change for Thomson Reuters, according to a quote from the annual report. Since 2013, thousands of jobs have been cut in order to reduce costs in the legal, finance, and risk departments. In 2016, for example, the "Intellectual Property & Science Business" segment was sold for 3.55 billion dollars. The financial markets division ("Financial & Risk Business") was spun off in 2018, initially with a majority stake being acquired by the investment company Blackstone. A sale from which Thomson Reuters realized around 17 billion and retained a 45 percent stake in the new company called Refinitiv. In 2019, the London Stock Exchange acquired Blackstone's stake.

Background: Four players compete in the specialized information business. In addition to Thomson Reuters, these are Bloomberg (ranked 28th in the 2021 IfM ranking), S&P Global (ranked 33rd), and Fact Set Research Systems (Norwalk, Connecticut, ranked 115th in the 2021 IfM ranking). Bloomberg is by far Thomson Reuters' biggest competitor. The "Bloomberg Terminal," a desktop computer from the company of the former New York mayor of the same name, provides brokers and bankers with the latest information in real time, has long since prevailed over Thomson Reuters' rival product, "Eikon."

management

Steve Hasker has been President and Chief Executive Officer of Thomson Reuters since March 2020. Hasker most recently worked at the Hollywood artist agency Creative Artists Agency (CAA), and before that, from 2009 to 2014, he headed the market research firm Nielsen (ranked 63rd in the current IfM ranking). From 1998 to 2009, he was a partner in the Global Media, Entertainment and Information practice at the management consultancy McKinsey. Before joining McKinsey, Hasker spent five years in various finance roles in the United States, Russia, and Australia. He grew up in Australia and has worked throughout North America, Europe, and Asia throughout his career.

Business segments

Thomson Reuters since 2018 is in five reportable segments divided.

With the segment “Legal Professionals” law firms and legal departments of companies and governments are addressed. Research and WorkflowProducts are offered, all with the help of specialist information services such as “Westlaw”, “Sweet & Maxwell” or “Carswell”.

 The “Corporates”-Business segment is aimed at corporate customers, including the world's seven largest audit firms (in legal, tax, regulatory and compliance).

“Tax Professionals” affects tax, accounting and audit professionals in other audit firms as well as government tax authorities with research and workflow products.

Reuters News is the media segment that delivers real-time news from business, finance, and from home and abroad to newspapers, TV stations, radio stations and websites.

“Global Print”: Provides legal and tax information to customers worldwide, primarily in print format.

Current developments