Tag Archives: Thomson Reuters
Reuters journalist named prez of Hong Kong journalists
by Chris Roush
Tara Joseph, executive producer, Asia of Reuters Insider has been elected president of Hong Kong’s prestigious Foreign Correspondents’ Club.
Joseph has served on the club’s board for the past three years, and taken an active role in overseeing the club’s professional committee, along with organizing and introducing speakers at lunches and events.
Joseph has been a Reuters journalist for two decades, with news reporting experience in both TV and print. She has more than 10 years experience reporting and presenting for TV in Asia. Before moving to Asia, Joseph was the main presenter and global editor for Reuters Financial TV based in London.
Joseph is a graduate of the Columbia University School of Journalism, and Smith College in the United States.
Value of Thomson Reuters brand declines
by Chris Roush
Interbrand is out with its annual rankings of the most valuable brands in the world, and it states that the Thomson Reuters brand lost 11 percent of its value in the past year and is now worth $8.4 billion.
Interbrand states:
Under volatile market conditions, rival Bloomberg thrived while Thomson Reuters lost market share. Specifically, Thomson Reuters Eikon, the flagship product of the Financial & Risk business, struggled to gain traction with customers. Its performance contributed to a revamped organizational structure, including the installation of CEO James C. Smith.
Although the new management team has already refocused the company on its core competencies, the brand’s lack of communication to the market regarding these changes (and in response to negative press) has influenced customer confidence. Thomson Reuters, however, remains invested in building a well-organized and aligned portfolio across diverse business areas.
What’s more, offerings in some of the brand’s key businesses, such as Legal and Tax & Accounting, lead their respective markets. Looking ahead, Thomson Reuters has an opportunity to assert influence and leadership through its ongoing commitment to corporate citizenship and its “customer first” initiative — both within its Financial & Risk business and across the organization.
Bloomberg complained about Reuters deal with Michigan
by Chris Roush
Bloomberg News editor in chief Matthew Winkler complained last year to the University of Michigan about its relationship with Thomson Reuters that allows the financial news and data company to provide consumer confidence data to some traders early for a fee.
Brody Mullins, Michael Rothfeld, Tom McGinty and Jenny Strasburg of The Wall Street Journal write, “Matthew Winkler, editor in chief of Reuters rival Bloomberg News, criticized the University of Michigan’s arrangement with Reuters in a letter to the university’s president and provost in April 2012.
“‘As an institution that receives public funding, the university has a legal and ethical obligation to be accountable to the public. If such organizations as Bloomberg News, Reuters, Dow Jones and others do not have equal access to information, neither does the public,’ Mr. Winkler wrote, in a communication reviewed by the Journal. He said Reuters’s subscribers had ‘an unfair advantage.’
“Suellyn Scarnecchia, then the university’s general counsel, responded to Bloomberg that university officials ‘have always been comfortable that our relationships and structures were in full compliance with all applicable laws.’
“Six years earlier—before Reuters acquired distribution rights—Bloomberg itself bid for them, promising it would create a level playing field.
“After its offer wasn’t accepted, a Bloomberg executive editor emailed the university complaining that in the deal the school planned to make with Reuters, ‘you will be guaranteeing that every other news organization—to say nothing of every investor who doesn’t subscribe to Reuters—will be disadvantaged. No wonder Reuters is willing to pay you so much more than Bloomberg: While we were offering money to help the University create a system that is fair to everyone, they are paying you to guarantee an unfair one!’
“A university economist told Bloomberg at that time that those were difficult issues the university was grappling with.
“Journal publisher Dow Jones doesn’t exclusively distribute indicators created by nongovernment entities but does send some exclusive content reported by its news staff to premium subscribers before it is published on general newswires or on its website. Most Journal articles are available only to subscribers.”
Read more here.
How Thomson Reuters gives some traders an advantage
by Chris Roush
Eamon Javers of CNBC reports how Thomson Reuters is allowing a consumer confidence number that routinely moves markets upon release to be accessed by an elite group of traders, for a fee, a full two seconds before its official release.
Javers writes, “For exclusive access to the data, Thomson Reuters pays the University of Michigan $1 million per year, according to the contract, in addition to a “contingent fee” based on the revenue generated by Thomson Reuters. The contract reviewed by CNBC was signed in September of 2009. It expired a year later. Thomson Reuters and the University Michigan confirmed that the relationship still exists.
“In a statement, Thomson Reuters said, ‘Through an agreement with University of Michigan, Thomson Reuters is the exclusive distributor of the Thomson Reuters/University of Michigan Surveys of Consumers to its clients through various subscription services as well as to the general public via a press release. Details of the tiered release of this data are provided openly to Thomson Reuters customers and the wider public and anyone wishing to trade on this data can pay for the service that best meets their data needs.’
“Many market participants are not aware that some traders get a head start on market-moving data with plenty of time to execute trades before the general public receives the same information. And the existence of an elite group that receives early information is likely to attract criticism that it doesn’t square with the principle that market-moving information should be released to all market participants equally.
“‘I worry that there’s both a fairness and a disclosure issue,’ said former Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Harvey Pitt. ‘If I’m paying a lot of money, I should know whether I have the best deal possible. If there was no disclosure of the tiered structure, that would be a serious problem.’”
Read more here.
Thomson Reuters consumer confidence data being released early
by Chris Roush
ReSimone Foxman of Quartz writes about how the consumer confidence data collected by Thomson Reuters and the University of Michigan is being released to someone early, before its official release, according to research and trading records.
Foxman writes, “The consumer sentiment index is at the center of a lawsuit between Thomson Reuters and Mark Rosenblum, a former employee who sold financial data for the firm. Rosenblum says that while working at Thomson Reuters he spoke to officials at the FBI about the two-tiered data distribution system, because he believed that giving high-frequency traders a head start might violate insider-trading laws. He was fired on August 3, 2012, and in April, he took the company to court for wrongful dismissal.
“In its court filing, Thomson Reuters denies that it fired Rosenblum for bringing up these issues. It also denies his allegation that its practice of giving data to high-speed traders two seconds early gave them a trading advantage, though it doesn’t explain how. The suit is ongoing. Thomson Reuters had not responded to requests for comment by press time.
“However, there are reasons to suspect that data may have leaked out even earlier than this two-second window. Emails obtained by Quartz show that Thomson Reuters employees who were selling financial information to clients had access to the data well before the official release time—as early as 9:00 a.m. ET, nearly an hour in advance. Rosenblum told Quartz that he believes employees with early access might not always have kept that information to themselves, though he could produce no evidence of it. But a look at trading on the markets backs up that suspicion.”
Read more here.
Reuters News & Insights goes behind paywall
by Chris Roush
Thomson Reuters News & Insight content will be available exclusively on WestlawNext, as part of its Practitioner Insights offering, later this month.
On June 21, the Thomson Reuters News & Insight website, iPhone app and newsletters will be discontinued.
A company statement states,”When we launched News & Insight, our focus was on providing current awareness content that was tailored for a legal professional, combining world-class journalism with legal analysis and tools to help customers identify opportunities that will drive their success. Practitioner Insights on WestlawNext is an important step forward in this vision, with actionable current awareness that is integrated into the everyday workflow of WestlawNext customers.”
The statement later adds, “Practitioner Insights are practitioner-focused pages on WestlawNext that bring legal professionals the exclusive current-awareness information and analysis that they need to stay up to speed and lead in their practice area. Each page is maintained by a dedicated team of attorney editors who monitor a specific practice area and curate breaking business news, exclusive insight and analysis from industry experts, as well as the most comprehensive collection of litigation materials and primary legal content, to ensure that WestlawNext customers will be the first to know about actionable emerging developments that matter to them and their clients.”
Read more here.
Reuters hires Southern Europe bureau chief from WSJ
by Chris Roush
Reuters managing editor Paul Ingrassia and Editor of Europe, Middle East and Africa Michael Stott sent out the following hiring announcement on Monday:
We are pleased to announce that a distinguished Reuters alumna, Alessandra Galloni, is rejoining the company as Southern Europe Bureau Chief and Enterprise Editor at Large this fall.
Based in Rome, Alessandra will oversee our news bureaus in Italy, Spain, Greece and Portugal, reporting to EMEA Editor Michael Stott. She begins in September.
Alessandra will succeed Barry Moody, who has led the southern European bureaus with distinction for the last three years while they were at the centre of the euro zone crisis. Most recently, he led our superb coverage of the papal and Italian elections and the latter’s turbulent aftermath. Barry, one of our most experienced correspondents and editorial managers, will leave Rome at the scheduled end of his assignment in late September. His next post will be announced in due course.
Alessandra returns from The Wall Street Journal, where she spent 12 years in London, Paris, Milan and Rome. There she covered European corporate beats including advertising, media and luxury goods, and was chief political and economic correspondent in Italy and later in France. She ran the WSJ’s Southern Europe bureau between 2006 and 2011, and has since been running the combined Italy bureau of the Journal and Dow Jones Newswires.
After a year at the Associated Press, Alessandra began her career in earnest at Reuters in 1996 on the Italian-language service in Rome, covering politics and the economy, before switching to general and political news on the international side. In 1999 she moved to London, where she took on the UK transport beat, covering British Airways, the dying UK auto industry and the seasonal leaves-on-tracks paralysis of the British railway system.
Alessandra led a team that won an Overseas Press Club Award in 2004 for coverage of the Parmalat scandal, and received the UK Business Journalist of the Year Award in 2005. This year, she co-wrote “From the End of the Earth to Rome,” an e-book on Pope Francis.
Reuters social media editor headed to Circa
by Chris Roush
Anthony DeRosa, the social media editor at Reuters, has resigned to become the editor in chief of news start-up Circa, reports Mike Isaac of All Things D.
Isaac writes, “De Rosa has been the social media editor for Thomson Reuters for the past two years, aiming to grow the company’s social presence with his very active Twitter and Facebook presence. Before this, De Rosa also worked on a number of media-related partnership programs inside of Thomson Reuters, and also spent time building out SB Nation’s social presence via Tumblr.
“Circa, like a number of news-focused mobile apps in the tech space recently, aims to bring breaking stories to consumers on smartphones who want to read news quickly, on the fly. To do that, Circa’s editors break down some of the largest news stories of the day into ‘atomic units’— the company’s words, not mine — essentially what Circa considers the meat and potatoes of a news story. From there, it’s easier for readers to get in and out of a news story fast.
“‘There’s a huge opportunity to present news in a way that’s made for mobile,’ De Rosa said in a company blog post on Tuesday. ‘Nobody is thinking about this more than Circa and I’m thrilled to help move that mission forward.’”
Read more here. Talking Biz News reported earlier this month that DeRosa had been reprimanded recently at Reuters for failing to tell superiors that an employee’s home had been searched as part of a hacking investigation.
Thomson Reuters hires exec to run media business
by Chris Roush
Andrew Rashbass, currently group chief executive of The Economist Group, has been hired by Thomson Reuters to run its news and media business.
Rashbass has worked for The Economist for 15 years in a number of roles, including managing director of Economist.com and publisher of The Economist. He has been group chief executive since 2008.
Rashbass will join the company in the summer in the newly established role of chief executive, Reuters. He will be based in London. Stephen J. Adler, president and editor-in-chief, will report to Rashbass.
“I am excited to be joining Reuters with its unmatched commitment to reporting with speed, accuracy, integrity and independence,” said Rashbass in a statement. “As well as being, or in fact because they are, essential to Reuters journalism, these characteristics can also drive huge commercial success.”
Rashbass Joined The Economist Group in December 1997 from Associated Newspapers.
Read the release here.
Reuters vs. Bloomberg for chat functions
by Chris Roush
Simone Foxman of Quartz writes about how Reuters also offers a chat function to its customers that is similar to the one that Bloomberg offers on its terminals.
Foxman writes, “Alternatives to Bloomberg chat are already out there, the most prominent offered by Thomson Reuters itself since 2002. In fact, according to a source, Thomson Reuters Messenger has long been part of the media giant’s plans to win back Wall Street from Bloomberg—well before the Bloomberg snooping scandal.
“‘They know that they can’t match the data side,’ said the source, who had access to data on Reuters’ Messenger but spoke to Quartz on condition of anonymity. ‘But Reuters is much stronger in Europe and Asia, where the Bloomberg terminal hasn’t had as much penetration. Reuters Messenger is really popular there.’ The existing technology is expected to serve as a jumping-off point for Open Federated Chat; the main difference seems to be that the new service will have the backing of Markit and major banks.
“Thomson Reuters gives Messenger to Wall Street users free of charge, both as a standalone platform that synchronizes with chat networks like AOL and Yahoo, and as part of Reuters’ Eikon terminal interface. It offers more features than Bloomberg’s chat service, particularly in its chat rooms. The most recent of these, launched in January of this year, was the Global Markets Forum, which is run by a handful of Reuters editorial staff. Like the existing Global Oil Forum and Global Ags Forum, it encourages users to banter about the markets. Big-name economists and investors like Société Générale’s Kit Juckes and HSBC’s Steven Major are invited on to stimulate the discussion. Other chat rooms are locked to journalists.”
Read more here.
