Acquisition of the Year: Blackstone

Market data hit the headlines at the start of the year, not only because of Europe’s revised Markets in Financial Instruments Directive, but also because of what was occurring in the private equity space. The announcement of a Blackstone-led consortium agreeing to buy the Thomson Reuters Financial & Risk (F&R) business became a talking point in the industry—a megadeal that has topped this year’s reader vote for Acquisition of the Year. 

On January 30, news broke that the consortium, which also included Canada Pension Plan Investment Board and GIC, was buying 55 percent of Thomson Reuters’ F&R division in a deal valuing the business at $20 billion. As a result of the spinout, a new corporation is being set up to hold the F&R business, and Thomson Reuters will have a 45 percent stake in this new company.

Many Thomson Reuters brands well known in the reference and market data industry—including the Eikon desktop workstation, messaging service Eikon Messenger, time-series database Datastream and the Elektron data distribution platform—will be part of the new company once the transaction is completed. Martin Brand, senior managing director of the private equity group at Blackstone, says: “Thomson Reuters is one of the most trusted companies in financial technology, and its F&R division has a number of world‑leading businesses, including market‑leading trading venues for government bonds and foreign exchange, a fast‑growing risk and compliance business, the powerful Eikon terminal—a world-class data platform—as well as a strong wealth business.”

Customers eagerly await news on growth plans from the data giant, and Brand comments that “the business is a trusted partner for financial institutions worldwide, and will see continued and accelerated investment in product innovation following the close of the Blackstone transaction.” The transaction is expected to close in the second half of 2018.

In this year’s awards, Thomson Reuters has also risen to the top in the Best Market Data Provider (Vendor) and Best Reference Data Integration Vendor categories, as well as landing the illustrious, editorially decided, Overall Best Data Provider award. Max Bowie, editor of Inside Data Management, says: “This year, Thomson Reuters’ F&R division faces its biggest organizational challenge since 2007—when Thomson Corp. acquired Reuters—as the business is spun out. But the core strengths reflected in these awards will remain intact, and we look forward to seeing the F&R division—whatever its new name will be—return to defend these wins in next year’s awards.”

Read more about the IMD/IRD Awards 2018 winners