Thomson bids for Reuters to survive exchange shake-up.

Byline: Tracey Caldwell

Thomson bids for Reuters to survive exchange shake-up

Thomson and Reuters are future-proofing their existence as financial information providers by tying the knot, experts have told IWR.

Data providers are facing a rapidly changing market environment in Europe in particular, where trades no longer have to be reported to domestic stock exchanges, and the big banks are planning their own trade reporting service, Boat, to sell data directly to users or providers.

Information professionals fear that data costs will rise as a result of Boat, but Thomson-Reuters' combined strength may act as a counterweight to hold prices at present levels.

Financial data users have some pressing questions for Thomson-Reuters. "The big question is how this merger will affect the movement toward open architecture and the efforts of financial institutions to lower latency in pricing feeds," said Andrew Liegel, senior research analyst at market watcher Financial Insights.

The tie-up also looks likely to accelerate the development of quasi-automatic trading systems, where trades are executed without human input based on intelligence and analysis provided alongside the data feed.