News wires tread on newspapers' patch
Jinfo Blog

15th October 2009

By Penny Crossland

Item

Thomson Reuters is on the acquisition trail in Europe– Nancy Davis Kho recently commented on the company’s purchase of Hugin Group, a Norwegian provider of regulatory and news distribution services(http://www.vivavip.com/go/e24988). Now we hear that Thomson Reuters(http://www.thomsonreuters.com) is buying UK-based news service Breakingviews.com (http://www.breakingviews.com), in order to expand its business and financial commentary service. (http://digbig.com/5bakrk) Established in 1999, Breakingviews distributes its columns to financial institutions and has syndication relationships with major US and European publications such as The New York Times, Fortune, International Herald Tribune, Le Monde and Handelsblatt. With this acquisition, Thomson Reuters will be treading on the toes of the likes of the FT’s Lex service and the WSJ’s ‘Heard it on the Street‘ (http://digbig.com/5bakrx) . However, what is more interesting is that the company is moving on to the patch of online newspapers, who are struggling to find business models that will enable them to make enough money to survive. (see http://www.vivavip.com/go/e24127, http://www.vivavip.com/go/e22056 and http://www.vivavip.com/go/e22692). In fact, this acquisition can be compared to Bloomberg’s purchase of loss-making BusinessWeek( http://digbig.com/5bakrn), which will allow the financial news agency to improve on its news and company analysis, while at the same time providing it with potential new customers for its terminals. Both Bloomberg and Thomson Reuters have gained editorial talent to rival existing business publications. All that remains to be seen is how they are going to make money out it all.

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