Thomson Reuters

In 1851, German-born immigrant Paul Julius Reuter opened an office at the Royal Exchange Building in the City of London, using the newly laid Dover-Calais submarine telegraph cable to transmit stock market quotations and news between London and Paris; this business later grew into Reuters.⁠[1][1][1]

The Thomson side of the business originated with Canadian entrepreneur Roy ThomsonRoy ThomsonRoy Thomson (1894–1976) was a Canadian-born newspaper and broadcasting entrepreneur. Starting from small radio stations and newspapers in Northern Ontario, he built a newspaper group spanning Canada, the United States, and the United Kingdom, owning in turn The Scotsman, The Sunday Times, and The Times, and expanded into commercial television, publishing, travel, and North Sea oil; in 1964 he was created a British baron with the title Baron Thomson of Fleet. His descendants control Thomson Reuters through Woodbridge.Open the full entry: he ran radio stations in Northern Ontario, and in 1934 he paid $2,600 for the weekly Timmins Press and turned it into a daily, his first newspaper. He then expanded his newspaper business into the United States and the United Kingdom: in 1952 he bought his first newspaper outside Canada, the Independent of St. Petersburg, Florida; he acquired The Scotsman in 1953, acquired the Kemsley Group, including The Sunday Times, in 1959, and acquired The Times in 1967.⁠[2][3][4][4][4][1][4]

In the 1960s, Thomson moved into book and magazine publishing, and in 1965 it started the travel business Thomson Travel, buying three package tour companies and the small airline Britannia Airways.⁠[3][2]

In 1941, during the Second World War, Reuters and its shareholders at the time, The Newspaper Proprietors Association Limited and The Press Association Limited, agreed on the Trust Principles, which require Reuters and its employees to act at all times with integrity, independence, and freedom from bias.⁠[5][5]

There are five Trust Principles, whose core provisions include: that Reuters shall at no time pass into the hands of any one interest, group, or faction; that the integrity, independence, and freedom from bias of Thomson Reuters shall at all times be fully preserved; and that Reuters shall supply unbiased and reliable news services to clients including the media, businesses, governments, institutions, and individuals.⁠[6][6][6]

Roy Thomson died in 1976 and was succeeded as chairman by his son, Kenneth Thomson. By then Thomson’s business had grown into a large privately owned communications conglomerate named The Thomson Organisation.⁠[2][1]

On December 28, 1977, the legal entity that is today Thomson Reuters Corporation was incorporated by articles of incorporation under the Business Corporations Act (Ontario) in Ontario, Canada. In 1978, the group established International Thomson Organisation Ltd. and moved its headquarters back to Toronto, and it subsequently used North Sea oil profits to acquire publishing and information businesses in North America.⁠[6][2][2]

In 1980, Thomson acquired a 100% interest in FP Publications, which published newspapers including The Globe and Mail, The Winnipeg Free Press, and The Vancouver Sun.⁠[4]

From 1978, Times Newspapers was hit by frequent strikes over pay and conditions, and the two papers suspended publication for 11 months. Unable to introduce new technology on acceptable terms, International Thomson sold the titles to Rupert Murdoch in 1981 for £12 million.⁠[2][2][2]

In 1984, Reuters became a public company listed on the London Stock Exchange and Nasdaq. To protect the Trust Principles, Reuters Founders Share Company Limited (today the Thomson Reuters Founders Share Company) was set up the same year to hold a single “Founders Share”; its directors have a duty to ensure, to the extent possible, that the Trust Principles are complied with, it has enhanced voting rights when someone seeks to obtain a significant shareholding in or control of the company, and its prior consent must be sought before any sale of the Reuters news business or other related material transaction.⁠[5][5][6][6][5][5]

In June 1989, Toronto-based Thomson Newspapers Ltd. and International Thomson merged to form The Thomson Corporation, which controlled newspaper, publishing, database, and travel holdings centered principally in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, and Scandinavia.⁠[2][1]

In the early 1990s, in addition to information publishing, the company ran leisure travel services in the United Kingdom and community newspapers in the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom. Because both businesses were cyclical and consumer-focused, the company shifted its focus to information publishing: it sold the travel business in 1998 for $1.9 billion, and in 2000 and 2001 it sold its community newspapers and a 50% interest in a newsprint manufacturing business for aggregate proceeds of $2.8 billion.⁠[7][7][7][7]

In January 2001, the company contributed the assets of The Globe and Mail and its related businesses to the Canadian media company Bell Globemedia in exchange for a 20% interest; BCE owned 70% and Woodbridge owned the remaining 10%. In 2003, the company sold this 20% interest to WoodbridgeWoodbridgeWoodbridge (The Woodbridge Company Limited) is the private investment holding company of Canada’s Thomson family and the primary investment vehicle for members of the family of the late newspaper proprietor Roy Thomson (the first Lord Thomson of Fleet). It is the controlling shareholder of Thomson Reuters, holding together with its affiliates approximately 71% of the common shares as of August 2026, and since 2015 it has wholly owned the Canadian newspaper The Globe and Mail.Open the full entry for $279 million, thereby exiting its last newspaper business.⁠[7][7][1]

In 2002, The Thomson Corporation raised $1 billion through a common share offering and began trading on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol TOC; the same year, David K.R. Thomson became chairman.⁠[1]

In 2006, Kenneth R. Thomson, former chairman of The Thomson Corporation, died at the age of 82. During his lifetime he controlled the company through Woodbridge, and his estate arrangements have the trust company subsidiary of a Canadian chartered bank as trustee.⁠[1][6][6]

On May 15, 2007, Thomson agreed to acquire Reuters Group PLC, with Reuters shareholders to receive 352.5 pence in cash plus 0.16 Thomson Reuters PLC ordinary shares for each share. The transaction received approval from the European Commission, the U.S. Department of Justice, and the Canadian Competition Bureau on February 19, 2008, was approved by the shareholders of both companies on March 26, and subsequently received court approvals in Ontario and the United Kingdom.⁠[8][8][8]

On April 17, 2008, The Thomson Corporation completed its acquisition of Reuters Group PLC, forming Thomson Reuters, and the corporate entity was renamed Thomson Reuters Corporation. The combined group served the financial, legal, tax and accounting, scientific, healthcare, and media markets, had more than 50,000 employees with operations in 93 countries, and had 2007 pro forma revenues of approximately $12.4 billion; its chief executive officer was Thomas H. Glocer.⁠[8][6][8][8][8]

After the combination, the company adopted a dual listed company structure: Thomson Reuters Corporation common shares traded on the Toronto Stock Exchange and the New York Stock Exchange under TRI, and Thomson Reuters PLC ordinary shares traded on the London Stock Exchange under TRIL, with its American depositary shares traded on Nasdaq under TRIN.⁠[8][8]

In 2009, the company completed the unification of its dual listed company structure, after which its common shares were listed on the New York Stock Exchange and the Toronto Stock Exchange under the symbol TRI.⁠[1]

In 2012, Jim Smith became chief executive officer of Thomson Reuters.⁠[1]

On January 30, 2018, Thomson Reuters announced a definitive agreement with Blackstone to sell a 55% stake in its Financial & Risk (F&R) business to private equity funds managed by Blackstone. The transaction valued the business at approximately $20 billion; the company would receive approximately $17 billion at closing and retain a 45% interest, with the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board and GIC investing alongside. The company kept full ownership of its Legal, Tax & Accounting and Reuters NewsReutersReuters is an international news agency founded in London in 1851 by Paul Julius Reuter and is now the news business of Thomson Reuters. It provides text, photo, video, and graphics coverage to media and institutional clients and distributes it through channels such as Reuters Connect.Open the full entry businesses; F&R entered into a 30-year news services agreement with Reuters with an annual fee of at least $325 million.⁠[9][9][9][9][9][9]

On October 1, 2018, the transaction closed, the F&R business was renamed Refinitiv, and Thomson Reuters received approximately $17 billion in cash, of which it planned to return $10 billion to shareholders. On the same day, the company amended the provisions of its articles relating to the Trust Principles and the consent rights of the Thomson Reuters Founders Share Company.⁠[10][10][10][10][6]

In March 2020, Steve Hasker succeeded Jim Smith as president and chief executive officer and joined the board. He was previously Senior Advisor to TPG Capital, Chief Executive Officer of CAA Global, and Global President and Chief Operating Officer of Nielsen Holdings.⁠[6][1][6][6][6]

In August 2019, Thomson Reuters and the Blackstone consortium agreed to sell Refinitiv to the London Stock Exchange Group (LSEG). The transaction closed on January 29, 2021, as an all-share deal, leaving Thomson Reuters indirectly owning 82.5 million LSEG shares with a market value of approximately $9.8 billion based on the previous day’s closing price, subject to a lock-up through January 29, 2023.⁠[11][11][11][11]

On June 26, 2023, Thomson Reuters announced that it would acquire the legal AI company Casetext for $650 million in cash, and it closed the transaction on August 17. Founded in 2013, Casetext had been granted early access to OpenAI’s GPT-4 large language model, and its main product was CoCounsel, a GPT-4-powered AI legal assistant.⁠[12][13][12][12][12]

The same year, the company also acquired SurePrep, Imagen, and the remaining interest in Westlaw Japan; it sold approximately 56 million LSEG shares for proceeds of approximately $5.4 billion, of which $2 billion was returned to shareholders through a return of capital transaction. In November, the company launched AI-Assisted Research on Westlaw Precision and the CoCounsel Core AI Assistant for lawyers.⁠[6][6][6]

In 2024, the company invested more than $200 million in AI, launched products including CoCounsel 2.0, acquired Pagero, World Business Media (The Insurer), Safe Sign, and Materia, divested FindLaw, and completed the disposition of its entire LSEG stake.⁠[6][6][6][6]

On February 13, 2025, Thomson Reuters announced that it would voluntarily transfer its U.S. listing from the New York Stock Exchange to the Nasdaq Global Select Market; its shares began trading on Nasdaq on February 25, still under the symbol TRI, and its Toronto Stock Exchange listing was not affected.⁠[14][14][6][14]

In 2025, the company launched new products including Westlaw Advantage and CoCounsel Legal, acquired the tax-return workflow automation company SafeSend in January and the tax-form parsing company Additive in September, and announced a $150 million commitment to a second Thomson Reuters Ventures fund.⁠[6][6][6][6]

In February 2026, the company acquired the New York AI start-up Noetica and announced that it would return $605 million to shareholders from the proceeds of its May 2024 sales of LSEG shares. The plan was completed on May 4: each participating common share received a special cash distribution of $1.435518, followed by a share consolidation that reduced common shares outstanding by approximately 6.5 million.⁠[6][6][15][15]

On July 14, 2026, Thomson Reuters announced a definitive agreement with KKR to sell a 51% stake in its Global Print business, which provides legal and tax materials in print form, to capital accounts advised by KKR. It expects to receive approximately $500 million at closing and will retain a 49% stake in the joint venture as well as intellectual property rights and editorial control over the content. The company expects the transaction to close in the fourth quarter of 2026, subject to regulatory approvals.⁠[16][16][16][15]

Woodbridge (The Woodbridge Company Limited), the Thomson family’s private investment company, is the principal and controlling shareholder of Thomson Reuters: as of March 12, 2026, Woodbridge and its affiliates beneficially owned 313,118,088 common shares, or approximately 70%; as of August 4, 2026, their stake was approximately 71%.⁠[6][17][15]

Because of Woodbridge’s ownership, Thomson Reuters is a “controlled company.” Woodbridge holds common shares with one vote per share, and the company has not issued super-voting shares to it; no members of the day-to-day executive leadership team are affiliated with Woodbridge, a majority of the board is independent, and the Audit Committee consists entirely of independent directors. As of March 2026, 9 of the board’s 14 directors were independent, the chairman was David Thomson, the chief executive officer was Steve Hasker, and there was also a lead independent director.⁠[6][6][6][6][6][6][6]

Under the Thomson Reuters Trust Principles Support Agreement, Woodbridge has agreed to support the Trust Principles and to exercise its voting rights accordingly; for so long as Woodbridge is controlled by members of the Thomson family, companies controlled by them, and trusts for their benefit, the Thomson Reuters Founders Share Company has irrevocably designated Woodbridge as an “approved person.”⁠[6][6]

As of the end of 2025, the company was organized into five reportable segments: Legal Professionals, Corporates, Tax, Audit & Accounting Professionals, Reuters, and Global Print; its main products include Westlaw, Practical Law, Checkpoint, and the AI assistant CoCounsel. In 2025 the company’s revenues were $7.476 billion, with recurring revenues accounting for about 81%; it had about 27,100 employees as of the end of 2025.⁠[6][6][6][6][6][6]

The Reuters segment provides news and information, delivered to financial firms exclusively via LSEG products, and also serves the world’s media organizations and runs industry events and Reuters.com; in 2025 Reuters delivered approximately 3.6 million unique news stories, 829,000 pictures, and 142,000 video stories, and its primary competitors are Bloomberg, the Associated Press, Agence France-Presse, and Getty.⁠[6][6][6]

Thomson Reuters: Official website: https://www.thomsonreuters.com/ (opens in a new window).⁠[6]

X: Public account: https://x.com/thomsonreuters (opens in a new window)⁠[1]

LinkedInLinkedInLinkedIn is a social networking platform for professionals. It was founded in 2002 by Reid Hoffman and others, launched in 2003, and listed on the New York Stock Exchange in 2011; after Microsoft acquired it for approximately $26.2 billion in 2016, it became a wholly owned Microsoft subsidiary. Its revenue comes from membership subscriptions, advertising, and recruitment solutions.Open the full entry: Public profile: https://www.linkedin.com/company/thomson-reuters (opens in a new window)⁠[1]

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