David Mulhall's foresight and vision

Hans Ouwerkerk and Brian Mooney hit the mark in saying that Reuters missed a historic opportunity to combat the threat from Bloomberg in the 1980s. After our 1984 flotation we did indeed think of ourselves as invincible, a view based partly on arrogance and on our dominant position in the foreign exchange market. But we failed to spot the rise of the international bond markets, fuelled by President Reagan’s borrowing splurge.

I came back to London in 1983 as financial editor when David was marketing manager for capital markets. Reuters had no separate news service for these and, with the help of Marguerite Nugent as chief reporter, we created one. David specified an overall bonds product which he rightly thought could have knocked Bloomberg for six, with direct links to the news, and our managers at the time should be ashamed of themselves for failing to take this up. David was a wonderful guy with great foresight and vision, as shown by his subsequent trailblazing career as a naturopath working on children’s developmental problems. ■