Now For the Hard Part!

Implications: The ability of the new merged management team to keep clients happy when products are merged is going to be a key issue in making this merger work. Staff are understandably nervous about their prospects and the history of Reuters in recent years has included a great deal of almost ongoing upheaval.

Analysis: Merging financial data vendors is difficult if only because one product must win out and yet the reasoning may not always be clear cut. In a period when financial markets are unstable and banks will be keen to extract cost savings, Reuters-Thomson is going to have a very difficult job keeping clients loyal to many products happy.

Difficult definitely - impossible, of course not. However a great deal of diplomacy is required and the upside to this business is enormous.

Reuters Thomson needs to demonstrate an agility rarely seen in either structure in recent times and that will prove a huge challenge.
Having said that, in a financial marketplace which while currently recessionary will ultimately grow again, the merged entity has huge opportunities. Indeed, in many respects the sum of the pair is a combination of businesses who often due to the speed of market change may have been missing as many opportunities as they could exploit.

There is a lot of hard work ahead but then again there is simply enormous upside if the execution of a clear strategic vision is carried out.


Patrick L Young