CEO sees Thomson Reuters among 'info majors'

By Robert MacMillan

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The new Thomson Reuters Corp may compete most directly with Bloomberg LP and Reed Elsevier, but Chief Executive Tom Glocer thinks the company also may jostle with Google Inc and Microsoft Corp.

"There are going to be a handful of 'information majors,'" Glocer, 48, said in an interview in his office at the Reuters building in Times Square on the eve of Canadian publisher Thomson Corp's completion of its more than $16 billion purchase of Reuters Group Plc.

"We're all going to keep an eye on each other," Glocer said. "We're all going to compete in some areas, cooperate in some others."

Thomson Reuters, which begins trading in London, Toronto and New York on Thursday, will be known primarily for its worldwide news service, data products and technology for financial professionals and its portfolio of products serving the legal, scientific, accounting and health-care sectors.

Behind that is Glocer's idea of what he calls "intelligent information" -- his longer-term goal of lacing data sources from both companies together. He wants to offer people easy access to the information they need to do their jobs -- and wants them to pay for the convenience.

Most of these tools have a low profile in the eyes of the public, but Glocer prefers to focus most on that field rather than competing directly against the Googles and Microsofts of the world in the wider consumer space.

"We are not going to own a film studio. We are not going to launch a teenage social networking service," he said, referring to News Corp properties 20th Century Fox and the MySpace social networking site.

"We're really focused only on professionals, people who will pay us for our content and services," he said. "What would you pay me for tomorrow's New York weather forecast? Probably nothing."