FT, after spurning Bloomberg offer, rumoured talking to Thomson Reuters

The hypothesis, reported in The Guardian on Thursday, is based on a passing remark by the unnamed executive about how the company might use the FT. The executive also spoke about how Bloomberg might use the FT.

“Then it trips out, according to my friend – said quite unselfconsciously, rather as though it should be obvious to all; for a moment, I actually think I’ve somehow missed the story – that the FT, having flirted with and then turned down an acquisition offer from Bloomberg, is now talking to Thomson Reuters,” Michael Wolff wrote. “I should qualify my source: he or she is not from the deal-making side (where they keep their mouths shut or, at least, more carefully confide), but someone likely to be consulted by the deal-making side. My source, by the way, has been usefully loose-lipped before, when in the woe-is-me-what’s-going-to-happen-to-us mood of so many media people.”

Wolff wrote: “For good measure, my lunch companion also says that at Thomson Reuters, they believe that the Wall Street Journal’s parent, News Corporation, will sell the Journal in two years, give or take – an actuarial (New Corp Chairman Rupert Murdoch [a former Reuters director], who protects the money-losing WSJ, will shortly be 81), as much as a business analysis.

“True, my companion clearly wishes for an FT or WSJ acquisition by Thomson Reuters to be true; so wishfulness may be coloring his sense of corporate ambition and the likelihood of a transaction. After all, the Thomson company, which owned papers in Canada and London, is one of the few newspaper companies – perhaps, the only one – to have mostly exited the business, reinventing itself, at great profit, as a modern, specialized, high-value, information company.”

Even when Thomson bought Reuters in 2007, it bought it not for its legacy news operation, but for its much greater business information assets, Wolff wrote. “Bloomberg, for its part, generates the overwhelming share of its revenues from its terminals and financial data products. Journalists work for Thomson Reuters and Bloomberg only at some sufferance – they aren’t really needed.”

Back at the Thomson Reuters office after lunch, Wolff asked his source “How solid is this?” 

“After the sinking sensation of realizing that foot may have been put in mouth, the source shuts the office door and says: ‘Solid. Solid. Really. Still at an informal level of conversation …’ – a slight retreat – ‘but in clear discussions.’ In other words, even if true, it could be a business lifetime until an agreement. Still. The logic of a deal can almost be as good as a deal.” ■