The Thomson Corporation and Reuters Group PLC merged to form Thomson Reuters in 2008. Thomson Reuters provides information for businesses and professionals in the financial, legal, tax and accounting, healthcare and science and media market. The company is dual listed with the Thomson Reuters Corporation in Canada and Thomson Reuters PLC in the UK. Publishing is organized into four divisions: Financial & Risk (not included in this ranking), Legal, Tax & Accounting, and Intellectual Property & Science.
Financial & Risk provides news, information and analytics, regulatory and operational risk management solutions. Legal produces online and print information, decision tools, software and services that support legal investigation, business and government professionals.
Tax & Accounting provides integrated tax compliance and accounting information, software and services for professionals in accounting firms, corporations, law firms and government.
Intellectual Property & Science serves governments, academia, publishers, corporations and law firms with intellectual property and scientific information, decision support tools and services.
The group also operates Reuters, a provider of real-time news and information services.
Thomson Reuters’ majority is owned by The Woodbridge Company, the Thomson family investment company.
Analysis & Key Developments
Financial
Overall corporate revenues fell from 12.71 billion USD in 2013 to 12.61 billion USD in 2014 mainly due to the decline in Financial & Risk, the segment that is not included in this ranking, while the other segments contributed revenue growth through acquisitions. This resulted in higher revenues in the combined publishing sales from Thomson Reuter’s Legal, Tax & Accounting, and Intellectual Property & Science, which climbed from 5.58 billion USD in 2013 to 5.76 billion USD in fiscal 2014.
Legal’s revenues increased 2% from 3.35 billion USD to 3.38 billion USD in 2014 with equal contributions from acquisitions and existing businesses. The increase in revenues from existing businesses was driven by 6% growth in the Legal Solutions businesses that make up almost half of the revenues in the Legal segment. Negative impact came from the US print market, which was down 7%, and US online legal information, down 1%.
Tax & Accounting revenues totaled 1.37 billion USD, up from 1.24 billion USD in the previous year. This is a change of 12%, of which 9% was from existing businesses, driven by increased demand for global tax solutions and from new product launches.
Intellectual Property & Science saw revenues increase from 982 million USD to 1.01 billion USD in 2014, up 3% with 2% growth from existing businesses and 5% growth form recurring revenue growth, partly offset by a decline in transaction revenues.
Internal organization
Thomson Reuters appointed new presidents at the beginning of 2014 for Legal and Intellectual Property & Science and Global Growth & Operations.
International
Sixty percent of revenues came from North and South America, the same as in 2013. Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) represented 30% (29% in 2013), and 10% came from Asia Pacific (11% in 2013). Thomson Reuters expects that the greatest growth opportunities are in Latin America, China, India, the Middle East, Africa, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations/North Asia, Russia and countries comprising the Commonwealth of Independent States, and Turkey. Revenues from these geographic areas represented approximately 10% of revenues in 2014.
Digital
Ninety-two percent of corporate revenues came from digital content, services, and software in 2014. The remaining 8% print revenue came primarily from Legal.
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