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THE
buyers of the world’s oldest financial and news provider
are shrugging off the “bad” news over the impact of a
stalling US economy, particularly in Asia and the
Philippines.
“We’ve
been traveling for the past seven, nine days across Asia
and there are other sectors that remain resilient and
continue to post growth outside of financials [sector],”
Thomson Reuters Corp. executive Devin Wenig told
reporters here on Monday.
Wenig,
Thomson Reuters’s markets division chief executive, led
a five-man team on a tour of countries where the merged
companies are active. From the Philippines, the
10-day-old Thomson Reuters team would head to
Singapore,
Japan and India before going back to the United States
and the European Union.
Thomson,
which provides financial data, bought Reuters, a news
agency employing 2,400 journalists, reportedly for more
than $16 billion in cash and stock. The purchase came at
a time when financial data on its North American base
bare a jittery future. The new company is now headed by
former Reuters chief Tom Glocer.
The
merged firms sell electronic news and data to market
traders, fund managers and analysts, as well as database
and other information to lawyers, accountants,
scientists and the health-care industry.
Knowing
in advance of a
US
economic downturn, however, was inconsequential, Wenig
said.
“It
wouldn’t have mattered anyway.”
Wenig
added that the company is focusing more on businesses
that are not yet “commoditized,” like online
advertising. That strategy, he says, is natural for
Thomson since it began as an electronic publisher.
Philippine sales executive Mellie Matias said the
company owns a 60-percent market share. Matias said the
preacquisition Thomson has been strong in its business
among brokerage houses and banks in the Philippines.
Philippine country manager Raoul Teh added that when
Thomson began in 1996, it provided customer
contact-center services, billing and collection and
product development mainly for the Japan market.
Michael
Peace, managing director, said that Thomson would expand
to offer nonfinancials like legal and science (managed
by the firm’s Hong Kong office) data service.
Wenig
also said the company would beef up its outsourcing
business in the country.
The
executives also emphasized there would be no layoff as
well as adjustment in its rates in the near term.
Reuters
bureau chief Raju Gopalakrishnan confirmed this to the
BusinessMirror. However, he said there is no plan for
expansion.
Reuters’s 14 full-time employees brought Thomson
Reuters’s headcount to 1,100. It sent its first news
from the Philippines in 1946.
Gopalakrishnan added, “It was clear that Reuters will
maintain its editorial independence and ways of doing
things.”
Still,
Thomson Reuters media division president Chris Ahearn
said there would be moves “to promote the culture of
entrepreneurial journalism.” |
