Thomson Reuters tackles Bloomberg chat dominance

Eikon Messenger, which does not require a subscription to Eikon data terminals, is used by 190,000 individuals. The volume of messages has doubled in the past year to more than 10 million messages a day, said David Craig, pictured, president of the group’s financial and risk division.

The roll-out of Eikon Messenger, formerly known as Thomson Reuters Messenger, to inter-dealer brokers, prime brokers, corporate treasurers and others using its FXAll foreign exchange trading platform, will help clients “reduce their reliance on one network”, Craig told the Financial Times. “They have got one dominant provider and they want to have multiple providers in a more open market.”

“Financial professionals depend on instant messaging tools to interact with the wider financial community and want tools that allow them to interact, irrespective of their choice of provider. This is why we’ve always been focused on using open standards and with connecting with other widely used instant messaging systems,” Craig said in a statement. “By opening up Eikon Messenger to the FXall community we are enabling the sell-side and buy-side to communicate more efficiently within networks they already trust. This is about helping our customers find new counter-parties and unearth new business opportunities whilst reducing complexity.”

The move follows Bloomberg’s announcement in May of a chat-based platform for trade negotiation, execution and processing in the foreign exchange market. The product, IB Dealing, is based on Instant Bloomberg, which carries more than 200 million e-mails and about 20 million chats a day between users of Bloomberg’s terminals.

It comes as Thomson Reuters and its smaller competitor, Markit, have been working with financial institutions including Goldman Sachs and Deutsche Bank to develop a rival messaging service. Known as Open Federated Chat, this would integrate with the companies’ internal communications systems, regardless of which desktop they use.

Craig declined to comment on details of the initiative, but said: “Customers have asked us to work together as an industry... There’s a lot of encouragement for us to work together.”

They were working on open standards for sharing directories and had to address security, privacy and compliance concerns to satisfy banks, individual users and regulators, he said, but he was “pretty confident” that the new chat service could launch in 2014.

Reuters launched a messaging service a decade ago, before its 2008 takeover by Thomson, but the FT said it had struggled to dent Bloomberg’s position in the market. Banks’ disquiet about news earlier this year that Bloomberg reporters monitored customers’ terminal use had encouraged rivals to think that they could challenge its dominance.

Craig, who said Thomson Reuters had “clear boundaries between editorial and the business”, said chat groups such as a global sports forum had been successful in driving engagement with Eikon Messenger.

Eikon’s launch three years ago disappointed investors, but the messaging push comes after second-quarter earnings showed that Thomson Reuters now has 61,000 Eikon subscribers, up 30 per cent in three months even as a weak European banking sector weighed on the financial and risk division’s revenues.

“Our competitive position has never been better,” James Smith, chief executive, told the Financial Times last week. “We have the strongest new product pipeline we’ve had in years.” ■