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Reuters open to tech, content acquisitions

BS Corporate Bureau

The Reuters Group Plc is looking at acquisitions in the Indian financial technology and content segment. As per its global vision, Reuters is keen on making acquisitions of firms and infusion of equity in partnerships.

"To make investments, we are waiting for the opening up of the banking and financial sector in India. Our investments will be in line with the financial reforms," Philip N Green, chief operating officer of Reuters, said.

"I can not quantify our proposed investment in the two sectors. It will be based on our requirements. India is a key market for us and we are keen to invest heavily to acquire and retain more customers," he added.

Reuters does not intend to scale down its investments in key markets including India. Its manpower of 170 in India is also expected to grow over a period of time. Its media workforce has a strength of 50 personnel in India.

Green, however, ruled out possibilities of acquiring domestic media firms since its main focus will be in financial sector. "Even if the country opens up the media sector by removing the cap on foreign investment, we will not make any acquisitions here," Green added.

Over the past few years, Reuters has been investing funds in the technology sectors. Recently, it announced that it will develop Reuters.Net - a new high security, open platform instant messaging service and contacts directory for the world's financial industry with Microsoft and 25 leading financial firms.

This will allow the financial professionals to communicate and do business with partners sharing common interests across the world.

Last year, Reuters announced a joint venture with Multex.com forming a new company, Multex Investor Europe to set up a financial portal for European private investors.

It has also forged an alliance with Equant to form Radianz with the aim of developing the world's largest Internet protocol network for financial markets.

Reuters unveils Dealing 3000 Direct

Reuters, the global information, news and technology group, has launched a new multi-functional workstation - Dealing 3000 Direct - to meet the needs of the foreign exchange and money market traders in the country. The launch coincided with Reuters' 150th year anniversary celebrations.

"A growing list of banks are using Reuters Dealing 3000 globally, since the launch of the new platform. More than 25 per cent of our customers have already upgraded to Dealing 3000 across 35 countries worldwide," Philip Green, chief operating officer of Reuters, said.

Reuters has worked closely with foreign exchange traders across the globe to develop the Dealing 3000 platform in order to meet the needs of both banks and individual traders. The Dealing 3000 allows for flexible and customisable user interface, navigations and functionality that mirrors the Microsoft Windows software making it easier to learn and operate.

"India is a very important part of our business and the forex business here is further strengthened with the launch of Dealing 3000. We already have two major banks - ICICI and an international bank - as our Dealing 3000 users for their foreign exchange dealings in the country," he added.

The business strategy for India is similar to the strategy that is applied worldover. Green said India is almost in the forefront of all their businesses, despite the stringent regulatory framework here.

With regard to expanding its business on the financial services front, Reuters in India sees great opportunities in three business such as treasury, investment banking and asset management, Green said.

As regards Reuters' media business, it is a very small part of their entire business, and globally this contributes less than 10 per cent to their total turnover. For the year ended December 2000, the group turnover was pounds 3,592 million.

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