Revenue 'strongly positive' - Tom Glocer

Sales were “still tracking to positive revenue growth next year” but this week’s turmoil “raises the potential to go negative”, he said at the annual Goldman Sachs Communacopia Conference in New York.

Glocer said the institutions toppled by the financial crisis of recent months accounted for just 1 per cent of Thomson Reuters’ annual revenues.

“This week there has obviously been extraordinary panic, but it’s not like it’s been rosy the past 13 or 14 months,” he said.

Before the “major sea-shift” in financial markets, the group had been on course to record positive revenue growth next year.

If the current crisis were limited to the already known consequences of the collapse of Lehman Brothers, the takeovers of Merrill Lynch and Bear Stearns, and the government bail-outs of AIG, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, there was “the potential [for sales growth] to go negative, but the business is resilient enough that we’d have a significant shot at going positive next year”.

The CEO added: “If we’re at the beginning of the 1930s, as some would say, it will be more serious.”

Glocer said it was difficult for him to reconcile the company’s positive performance this far into the credit crisis with his experiences in previous economic and financial downturns.

Thomson Reuters shares rebounded in New York and Toronto, regaining some of the losses caused by the financial market shakeout, but lost further ground in London. ■