The European Union said yesterday that the Thomson Corporation’s plan to buy the Reuters Group raised competition concerns for the supply of financial information.
The European Commission, Europe’s antitrust authority in Brussels, told the companies it needed more time to study the £8.7 billion ($17.7 billion) acquisition. Thomson and Reuters said in a separate statement that they would work with the commission on issues requiring further review.
“A second phase would give us the time to find out what we need to come to a proper and balanced decision,” the competition commissioner, Neelie Kroes, said yesterday.
She declined to comment on what aspects of the combination the extended investigation would focus on. The commission said it would rule on the deal by Feb. 25.
The acquisition of Reuters, a news organization based in London with 2,400 journalists in more than 130 countries, would increase Thomson’s sales to $11 billion and triple its share of the financial data market to 34 percent. Thomson, based in Toronto, owns the Westlaw legal database and TradeWeb bond-trading network.
The United States Justice Department will make a decision by Jan. 15, Thomson and Reuters also said yesterday.
Bloomberg, the parent of Bloomberg News, competes with Thomson Financial and Reuters in selling information and trading systems to the financial services industry.
Reuters’s 196 bureaus would expand Thomson’s news organization beyond Thomson Financial News in North America and the AFX News service in Europe. Most of Thomson’s management and staff work in the company’s offices in Stamford, Conn.
The companies said they expected to save more than $500 million annually three years after the combination.
