Thomson Reuters urged to work with EU anti-trust regulators

The European Commission opened an investigation into the codes, used to identify specific stocks, in November 2009, saying the company may have breached EU rules on abuse of a dominant market position.

“I take this opportunity to encourage the company to work with us for a speedy resolution of the case,” EU competition commissioner Joaquin Almunia said in the text of a speech prepared for the Cass Business School in London. He said it was time for regulators to examine the control and dissemination of market data to establish whether there was abusive behaviour by owners seeking to leverage privileged access to information to foreclose rivals or distort the market. Almunia said he was against any one group controlling essential infrastructure such as trading, clearing or pre-trading platform.

Thomson Reuters markets division chief executive Devin Wenig told a panel at the same conference that he would not comment on directly on Almunia’s request, but he expressed optimism that the issue would be resolved. “For a hundred and fifty years we have worked cooperatively with regulators and we believe that we’ll reach an efficient solution this time as well,” Wenig said. ■