Reuters Chief Renfrew Will Retire In March; Asia's Job Is Named As Successor

Glen Renfrew, managing director and chief executive of Reuters Holdings PLC for the past 10 years, will retire March 1. If news of Renfrew's retirement was no big surprise, Reuters' appointment of Peter Job to succeed him was.

Job has been managing director of Reuters Asia since 1988. His appointment ended years of speculation about who would succeed Renfrew. It surprised many at the company who were convinced that the leadership battle was being played out by Reuters America chief Andre Villeneuve and Reuters Europe, Middle East and Africa managing director David Ure. Renfrew is 62 years old; Reuters' mandatory retirement age is 65.

The appointment of Job is seen by insiders as a signal that Reuters will move toward a more centralized management structure based in London. Job, a champion of region-specific Reuters products while heading up Asia, now is leaning toward a more centralized approach especially with respect to product development, sources at Reuters say.

These sources also say that Job will make it a primary goal to bring products to market on time. That aim is seen by some London staffers as a snub against Reuters America, home to the company's transactional services group, whose Dealing 2000-2 and Globex products are months behind schedule, and to Reuters' much-delayed Decisions 2000 effort to develop a rival to Bloomberg L.P.'s fixed-income analytics service.

Some believe Job's emphasis on punctuality may result in the relocation of product development -- currently headed by New York-based Buford Smith -- to London. Reuters sources expect Job to restructure the newly reorganized Reuters yet again once he has settled into his new position, possibly ending the geographical management structure. The latest reorganization this fall did away with the split between real-time and historical information and trading room systems products, but divided the merged groups along marketing and product development lines (IMD, Oct. 1).

Whatever Job's plans for the company are, he'll have a tough time filling Renfrew's shoes. Renfrew, who spent his early career in a variety of editorial and management posts, has been credited with transforming Reuters from a news agency into one of the world's largest providers of financial market data.

Renfrew managed Reuters' entry into the real-time quotations business with early products such as Stockmaster and Videomaster. In 1971, he was appointed managing director for North America and rose through the ranks to become managing director of Reuters in 1981. He was heavily involved with the launch of Monitor, and steered Reuters through the process of becoming a public company.

The campaign to succeed Renfrew had been running since the 1988 reorganization that created Reuters' geographical management structure. Prior to the announcement of Job's promotion, many Reuters watchers and insiders believed that either Villeneuve or Ure would take the top job. Indeed, many believed that if Renfrew's successor was not to be Ure or Villeneuve, then it would be an outsider.

But sources at Reuters say Renfrew, long a staunch supporter of Villeneuve, became frustrated at the company's lack of success in the U.S. and with the delays of several of Reuters America's resident products, most notably Dealing 2000-2, the order-matching system for the interbank foreign exchange market.

These sources say Renfrew considered that Ure lacked the presentation skills necessary for the top job. Others, meanwhile, say Renfrew may have been irked by Ure's sometimes vocal criticism of his leadership.

Job himself has been quietly avoiding the flak from the Ure-Villeneuve succession battle. Reuters Asia has performed well under his leadership, although many have attributed that largely to the sound economic growth in the region. Job has managed to avoid any volatile global product responsibilities; Reuters Asia is home to the relatively low- key media products group.

Job is 49 years old. His background is in journalism. He has been with Reuters since 1963, and worked as a reporter and editor until 1974 when he moved to a management post. He became managing director of Reuters Asia in 1988. Sources familiar with Job say he has a firm understanding of Reuters' products and their respective technologies.

Job made his first public appearance as MD-elect at analysts meetings in London and New York last week. While he didn't use the meetings to set out any vision of life at Reuters under Job, at the New York panel he did stress unity.

"We are a team, not a collection of individuals, especially at the top of the company," he said. It isn't known whether Villeneuve and Ure will now remain with Reuters. If they do, they could find themselves in new roles if Job goes ahead and eliminates the geographical regions.

Aside from his unity statement and a brief assessment of Reuters' marketplace, Job left most of the talking to Renfrew, analysts say. At the meeting, Renfrew said the company would be satisfied to achieve double-digit growth in pre-tax profit next year. Reuters expects profit to climb about 13 percent this year to 320 million pounds sterling. He didn't provide an estimate of 1990 or 1991 sales, but said Reuters expects to enter next year with revenue running at four percent above the year-earlier level at actual exchange rates, and at seven percent higher at comparable rates.

Renfrew described current market conditions as difficult. He said that cancellations of Reuters' rental products remain heavy and that hopes for strong new net orders aren't good. He didn't provide figures for cancellations.

Reuters currently has 2,000 installed terminals receiving its IDN-based Money 2000 service, with a further 5,700 terminals on order, Renfrew said. The company has installed 3,000 Dealing 2000-1 terminals and has a further 4,000 on order. The number of Dealing and Dealing 2000-1 terminals in the market now totals 14,000, Renfrew said.

In response to an analyst's question concerning the migration to IDN from the Monitor network, Job said the process is expected to take about three or four years. The Reuters executives said that the migration will be speeded by the availability of data feed products and by making country- specific Monitor services available through those feeds.

A few hours prior to the New York meeting, Reuters issued a statement describing its plans to begin beta tests of its Globex futures-trading system during the first quarter of next year.