Obama pledge a silver lining for Thomson Reuters?

It would mean more work for lawyers and accountants tasked with keeping up with such restructuring and that could prove good for business for Thomson Reuters whose legal and regulatory databases would be relied upon.

“It’s likely that within the first year of the new Obama administration we’ll see far-reaching new regulation of the capital markets and many changes to the tax code. And this will inevitably boost demand for our legal and tax and accounting products,” the newspaper quoted CEO Tom Glocer as telling analysts in a conference call on Wednesday.

Glocer said Thomson Reuters had noticed an increase in the number of hours that clients were logging on to its legal databases and software applications.

“We’ve already seen an interesting tick up in securities lawsuits [and] lots of investigations going on concerning how did AIG fall apart? How did Lehman Brothers fall apart?” he said. “And then over on our tax and accounting side, it looks very likely that campaign promises to the effect there are going to be changes to the tax code [could] have a good effect on our tax and accounting business.” ■