Reuters Reorganization Shifts Focus To Chicago

Trading room development at Reuters Holdings PLC is being centralized by a reorganization that simultaneously consolidates and redistributes the company's broad engineering resources.

In a restructuring move that has already begun, Reuters is sending the core of its London-based development team to Chicago, where it will join forces with the Client Systems division of Reuters subsidiary Rich Inc. As many as 130 employees at Reuters' Marlowe, England site were reportedly affected by the consolidation.

This centralized engineering site will be complemented by a network of regional application centers located in London, Geneva, Tokyo and New York. The Chicago consolidation will take two to three months to complete.

"What we've actually done is consolidate the major core development into one group in Chicago and then have the local development done through the regional application centers," says Mario Rosi, the product group leader for trading room systems at Reuters in London.

The Tokyo regional application center already exists, and the others will be established over the next several months. "These units will be tasked with local development to support the needs of local clients," Rosi says.

Up to now Reuters/Rich trading systems development had been split between the two major development sites in Chicago and London. Asked why the development team was being consolidated, Rosi replied that "it needs to be in one location."

The expanded Chicago development office will be headed by Greg Meekings, currently the international technical manager for trading room systems at Reuters in London.

But other staffing issues remain clouded. Rosi says the reorganization will mainly involve relocation of personnel, rather than lay-offs. In addition, a few staff are being given other posts in the U.K.

There would be no closing of any Reuters offices, he said, just building up of new ones.