Reuters Group Limited (pronounced: "roy-ters") was a UK-based, Canadian-controlled news service and former financial market data provider that provides reports from around the world to newspapers and broadcasters. News reporting once accounted for less than 10% of the company's income. Its main focus was on supplying the financial markets with information and trading products. These included market data, such as share prices and currency rates, research and analytics, as well as trading systems that allowed dealers to buy and sell such assets as currencies and shares on a computer screen instead of by telephone or on a trading floor like that of the New York Stock Exchange. Among other services, the most notable was analysis of 40,000 companies, debt instruments, and 3 million economic series. Competitors included Bloomberg L.P. and Dow Jones Newswires. It is now part of Thomson Reuters.

History

In 1851, Reuter moved to London. After failures in 1847 and 1850, attempts by the Submarine Telegraph Company to lay an undersea telegraph cable from Dover to Calais appeared to promise success. Reuter set up his "Submarine Telegraph" office in October 1851 just before the opening of that undersea cable in November, and he negotiated a contract with the London Stock Exchange to provide stock prices from the continental exchanges in return for access to the London prices, which he then supplied to stockbrokers in Paris.

In 1865, Reuter's private firm was restructured, and it became a limited company (a corporation) called the Reuter's Telegram Company. Reuter had been naturalised as a British citizen in 1857.

Reuter's agency built a reputation in Europe for being the first to report news scoops from abroad, like the news of Abraham Lincoln's assassination. After many decades of progress, almost every major news outlet in the world subscribes to the Reuters company's services. It operates in at least 200 cities in 94 countries, supplying news text in about 20 languages.

Reuters was financed as a public company in 1984 on the London Stock Exchange and on the NASDAQ in the USA. However, there were concerns that the company's tradition for objective reporting might be jeopardised if control of the company later fell into the hands of a single shareholder. To counter that possibility, the constitution of the company at the time of the stock offering included a rule that no individual was allowed to own more than 15% of the company. If this limit is exceeded, the directors can order the shareholder to reduce the holding to less than 15%. That rule was applied in the late 1980s when Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation, which already held around 15% of Reuters, bought an Australian news company that also owned stock in Reuters. The acquisition meant that Murdoch then held more than 15%, and then he was compelled to reduce the holding to less than 15% to stay in line with the rules.