Thomson Reuters to slash 2500 jobs

14 February 2013 | 5949 views | 1 Stock broker in front of Stock exchange screen

Thomson Reuters is to cut 2500 jobs from its underperforming financial and risk division by year end.

News of the cuts comes as the news and data provider unveiled a return to profit of £239 million in the fourth quarter. The redundancies will come with a $100 million severance price tag to be charged off in Q1 2013.

Approximately 1000 salaries will be removed from the payroll upon completion of the sale of Thomson Reuter's corporate services division to Nasdaq OMX. The remainder will come from the decommissioning of older technology as the company moves customers to its new flagship Eikon and Elektron products.

Thomson Reuters core financial and risk division reported flat revenues in the fourth quarter as the unit continued to struggle with a decline in demand for desktop information services during a prolonged economic slump.

Announcing the cuts, chief executive Jim Smith said he expected sales to pick up in the second half of 2013, with the number of installed Eikon desktops up 33% on the third quarter at 33,900 positions.

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A Finextra member | 14 February, 2013, 21:22

The question of the day; will Thomson Reuters finally learn that its customers don't want a totally new desktop product every 10 years, nor do they want (if they use Thomson Reuters data) to have to buy software? They need to learn from Bloomberg, which comes out with small, easy to digest updates every month, requiring only very simple rollout procedures. Thomson Reuters has put its clients through RTW / ATW, Kobra, Kobra / 3000 Xtra, and now Eikon, each requiring massive learning curves, limited functionality at first, and some have required redoing ultra complex spreadsheets and expensive infrastructure updates.

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