EU investigating Thomson Reuters

EU antitrust regulators said Tuesday that they are investigating whether Thomson Reuters Corp. is breaking monopoly abuse rules by preventing customers from applying their own codes to financial market data feeds, according to an Associated Press story.

The AP story states, “The European Commission says it wants to check if the company locks in customers because it may make it difficult for them to use their own or other software to translate the Reuters Instrument Codes that identify the securities and where they are traded.

“‘The problem is the restriction that is placed on the use of the code, the fact that if you subscribe to the Thomson Reuters real-time market datafeed you’re not allowed to use the identification codes alongside a feed from another service provider,’ Mr. Todd said.

“Banks face ‘a long and costly procedure’ to replace these codes by reconfiguring or rewriting their own software, regulators said.

“Mr. Todd said EU officials identified the potential antitrust abuse when they looked at Thomson’s takeover of Reuters last year which formed the company. He said they didn’t act then because it was not relevant to the merger review, which only examined how a newer larger firm would affect competition.”

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