Thomson clearance on Reuters runs on

THOMSON CLEARANCE ON REUTERS RUNS ON
[SOURCE: Financial Times, AUTHOR: Andrew Edgecliffe-Johnson]
Regulators may not decide whether to clear Thomson’s £9bn bid for Reuters before next February, after the European Commission ruled Monday that the deal should be subject to an in-depth investigation. A second-stage investigation had been expected, but some analysts had been hoping for a clearance as soon as the end of this year. The proposed deal, ann­ounced in May, “would raise serious doubts as regards adverse effects on competition in several markets of the financial information sector”, the Commission said. It highlighted particular con­cerns in the provision of data-feeds; access to specific databases; to realtime and after-market research, and the provision of news services. Analysts see few problematic overlaps between the two businesses, except in small areas such as research estimates. But the deal would narrow the number of large financial data providers from three to two, affecting competition with Bloom­berg and smaller specialists.
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/a85e2000-75da-11dc-b7cb-0000779fd2ac.html
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