Thomson Reuters to go hard after Bloomberg

Ian Austen of The New York Times writes Monday about how the newly merged Thomson Reuters, uncer CEO Tom Glocer, plans to aggressively compete with rival Bloomberg L.P.

Austen writes, “While Mr. Glocer may have to deal with all the usual problems that mergers bring, he has the advantage of running a significantly bigger company. The combined revenues of Thomson and Reuters last year were $12.5 billion, more than twice those of Bloomberg, and Thomson Reuters has about five times as many employees.

“Mr. Glocer thinks he can go after Bloomberg on price and, more important, on flexibility. While Bloomberg, which is privately held, generated about $5.4 billion in revenue last year and has about 10,000 employees, the company still offers, for the most part, a single product: the Bloomberg terminal and its vast array of data — once available only through Bloomberg’s proprietary desktop system, but now found on ordinary computers and even BlackBerrys. Bloomberg combines that news and data with sophisticated analytical software that allows traders to swiftly execute and track trades.

“For clients, Bloomberg is a ‘take it or leave it’ proposition that supplies everything the company generates for a monthly fee of $1,500 a user ($1,800 a month for the small number of firms that use only one terminal). Traders who have no interest in, say, debt markets cannot reduce their Bloomberg costs by subscribing to a service that drops that data.

“Bloomberg’s price and packaging may not have mattered as much during a bull market, but with Wall Street firms looking to cut costs, the fourth Bloomberg terminal on a trading desk could start to be seen as a luxury.”

Read more here.