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 three divisions: Financial & Risk (not included in this ranking), Legal, and Tax & Accounting.

Financial & Risk provides news, information and analytics, and 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.

The group also operates Reuters, a provider of real-time news and information services.

In October 2016, Thomson Reuter disposed the Intellectual Property & Science division in order to focus more on opportunities at the intersection of global commerce and regulation. Intellectual Property & Science served governments, academia, publishers, corporations and law firms with intellectual property and scientific information, decision support tools and services.The division was reported as a discontinued operation through the closing date of the sale, and results for 2015 have been restated.

A majority of Thomson Reuters is owned by The Woodbridge Company, the Thomson family investment company.

Analysis & Key Developments

Financial

In fiscal 2016 Thomson Reuters recorded a minor loss in revenues, which accounted for 11.2 billion USD, compared to 11.3 billion USD in 2015. The decline was driven by the fact that higher subscription revenues were more than offset by the impact of foreign currency as well as losses in transaction revenues and in Financial & Risk’s low margin recoveries revenues. The revenues in the combined publishing sales, covering Thomson Reuter’s Legal and Tax & Accounting, maintained their position but slipped slightly to 4.8 billion USD.

Revenues from Legal decreased again to 3.37 billion USD in 2016 compared to 3.41 billion USD in restated figures from 2015. Subscription revenues, which represented over 70% of Legal’s total revenues, grew 3%, but were partly offset by declines in transaction and U.S. print revenues.

Revenues from Tax & Accounting increased by 2% to 1.5 billion USD in 2016 from 1.4 billion USD in 2015 The growth was mainly driven by higher recurring revenues and partly offset by a decline in transaction revenues, primarily within the company.

Internal Organization

In October 2016 Thomson Reuters closed the sale of its former Intellectual Property & Science business to Onex Corporation and Baring Private Equity Asia for 3.6 billion USD in cash. The company plans to use about 1 billion USD of the net proceeds to buy back shares, pay down debt, and reinvest in the business. Earnings from the discontinued operation (net of tax) reached 2.1 billion USD.

International

By geography, revenues accounted for 62% from the Americas (63% in 2015); 27% from Europe, the Middle East and Africa (27% in 2015) and 11% from Asia Pacific (10% in 2015). Thomson Reuters also operates subsidiaries in Latin America, China, India, the Middle East, Africa, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations/North Asia, Russia, countries comprising the Commonwealth of Independent States, and Turkey.

Digital

In 2016, 93% (the same in 2015) of corporate revenues were derived from information delivered electronically, software, and services, with the remaining 7% derived from print (which is primarily part of the Legal segment).

In June 2017 Thomson Reuters announced its partnership with the chat service Symphony Communication Services LLC to enable users to chat and share data seamlessly.

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