Times fires broadside at Tom Glocer yacht

Glocer is entertaining investment bankers during the Monaco Grand Prix this weekend. Reuters sponsors the AT&T Williams team in the Formula One championship.

Under the headline “Tom Glocer sails off on a sea of others’ troubles”, The Times City Diary said: “In an act of callousness that might have brought a blush to the cheeks of Marie Antoinette herself, Tom Glocer, the Thomson Reuters chief executive, has chartered a yacht to moor in the harbour at Monaco just as the newly merged company announces 1,500 job cuts.

“The losses were put down to the urgent need to cut costs, and staffers there are understandably sick to see Glocer, as part of the group’s sponsorship of F1, hire the yacht to entertain investment banking clients to coincide with the grand prix there.

“Thomson Reuters is refusing to comment. Glocer made a £22.5 million windfall out of the merger between Reuters and Thomson that led to the job cuts. So 1,500 relatively poor people become poorer while a rich man, now considerably richer as a consequence, hires a yacht with someone else’s money to entertain some other very rich people. Could there be a more perfect parable for our times?”

A report in the Daily Mail said: “As hundreds of staff sweat over their jobs, Reuters will splash out an estimated £80,000 on boat hire and moorage charges to watch the two-hour race... 

“There’ll be no sign of belt tightening as Glocer schmoozes Reuters’ investment banking clients at one of the key events in the European social calendar.

“He’ll need to work as much charm as he can muster - the American must keep his Wall Street customers onside given that the credit crisis shows no sign of ending.” ■