Reuters
In this article, Louis DETALLE (ESSEC Business School, Grande Ecole Program – Master in Management, 2020-2023) explains everything there is to know about Reuters, the international giant in the data-providing market…
Quick presentation of the company
Thomson Reuters is a leading provider of business information services. As one of the main competitors of Bloomberg, their products include highly specialized information-enabled software and tools for legal, tax, accounting and compliance professionals combined with the world’s most global news service – Reuters.
Reuters is organized in 5 different business units:
Legal Professionals: This business unit serves law firms and governments with research products, focusing on intuitive legal research powered by emerging technologies and integrated legal workflow solutions that combine content, tools and analytics.
Corporates: Designed for corporate customers from small businesses to multinational organizations, this business unit provides its clients with a full suite of content-enabled technology solutions for in-house legal, tax, regulatory, compliance and IT professionals.
Tax & Accounting Professionals: This business provides its customers with research that focuses on intuitive tax offerings and automating tax workflows.
Reuters News: Supplies business, financial and global news to the world’s media organizations, professionals and news consumers through their many platforms.
Global Print: Provides legal and tax information primarily in print format to customers around the world.
Type of people working at Bloomberg (types of jobs)
Nearly 2/3 of Reuters’ employees work in the US, the remaining third working in Asia and in Europe. The careers available at Reuters are therefore numerous and very diverse.
Indeed, the profiles needed by Reuters consists in legal professionals, corporate professionals, tax & accounting professionals and journalists. Thomson Reuters also employs many software designers to help design the Reuters’ terminals, as well as sectorial legal and corporate specialists in order to provide precise and adequate analysis.
Main competitors
As Thomson Reuters’ activities are very diverse, we will classify the main competitors of the firm in respect to the activities.
For Thomson Reuters’ business that consists of software-design, Bloomberg LLP is the most natural competitor in this space with its very famous Bloomber Terminal. The terminal business is built on a fantastic technology platform that provides comprehensive financial information. There are other competitors, such as Dow Jones Industrial Average FX Trader, which have specialized in one type of industry whereas Reuters and Bloomberg remain generalists.
Reuters’ editorial branch’s main competitors would be Bloomberg News, the Financial Times (FT), the Wall Street Journal, and other traditional financial news companies. The same goes for their TV/radio operation (their competitor would be CNBC).
Use of data in financial markets
The explosion of financial data, enabled by the Internet tremendous potential, caused an explosion of demand for financial data. As evidenced in 2006 by the British mathematician and Tesco marketing mastermind Clive Humby’s quote, “Data is the new oil”, the data market seems to be limitless.
In addition, as Bloomberg acquires many of his competitors, such as BNA and BusinessWeek, this contributes to curbing the number of data providers and improving the monopoly of Bloomberg on the data-providing market. Reuters struggles to keep up the pace of its competitor which is very well established in this market.
Useful resources
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About the author
The article was written in March 2022 by Louis DETALLE (ESSEC Business School, Grande Ecole Program – Master in Management, 2020-2023).