Thomson Reuters expands in Middle East and Africa

The modern Dubai Media City offices overlooking the Gulf represent one of the few places that have managed to increase investment during the recession.

“While most companies have been looking at their strategies and trying to understand what to do with staff, we believe that the Middle East and Africa is a region that is growing, and as such have more staff coming in,” said Basil Moftah, managing director for Middle East and Africa.

“We now have 135 people based in Dubai and 15 people based in Abu Dhabi, so this is quite a substantial operation. It’s considered one of our largest offices globally,” he told Abu Dhabi-based newspaper The National.

The new hires, which bring total staff across the region to 520, were brought in to expand coverage of the region’s 22 stock exchanges and the 2,000 regional banks connected through Thomson Reuters’ trading systems, as well as deepen coverage in such areas as commodities, energy, equities and treasury. The company has appointed senior staff in the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Lebanon with expertise in Islamic finance, investment and advisory, and equities.

“Our biggest focus is obviously commodities and equities, given what’s happened in the market,” Moftah said. He declined to say how large Thomson Reuters’ investment in the Middle East and Africa expansion was, saying only that it was “definitely a double-digit, million dollar investment”.

Moftah said regional sales dipped in the second quarter, but the performance of Q2 and Q3 more than made up for it. “There was quite a lull during Q2 as businesses were rethinking what they were doing,” he said. “But since then, there has been a real pick-up in the Middle East and Africa. We are looking at double-digit growth for the year."

Joerg Floeck, head of sales and customer services for the markets division, said the company was looking to spend $1 billion a year on new technology, and was pursuing equally aggressive expansion in Latin America, Brazil, China and India. ■