Tom Glocer: We have a clear sense of mission

“We could do many things, but we have a clear sense of mission. Our core mission is to take content and software, and provide it to professionals as part of their work, to allow them to make better decisions faster,” the chief executive said in an interview.

The merger completed on 17 April 2008 went remarkably well “because we worked so hard at it”, he told the Dubai daily Gulf News. “Most people wrongly spend more time on the nuts and bolts of the physical aspects. But I think the long term determinants of success are the softer cultural issues on which I spent most of my time. As a result the company really feels like one company.

“One of the reasons that the merger has gone well is because from the very beginning I was very clear that this was not a merger of equals,” Glocer said. It was very clear that Thomson acquired Reuters and the combined company was named Thomson Reuters.

“The constituent parts of the whole were Thomson two thirds, Reuters one third.

“This was only slightly confusing because I personally came from Reuters, where I was CEO, before I became CEO of the merged group. And we reversed Thomson Financial News into Reuters, so it looked as if Reuters acquired the Thomson Financial business. But for the group, the whole thing was very clear: it was an acquisition of Reuters by Thomson Corp.”

Glocer added: “Providing news is integral to all of our services, even if the percentage of our revenues that come from the traditional Reuters news agency is well under five per cent of the total.”

He said Thomson Reuters would expand the number of vertical industries in which it participates. For example, a new business area, which also illustrates Thomson Reuters’ global approach, is Point Carbon, a carbon trading and energy service launched last year. “We now have the leading content and software for capturing both carbon pricing and other important factors, for whatever carbon trading regime is used, whether it is cap and trade or any other.” ■