Thomson Reuters' Playbook For Beating Bloomberg: Compete On Price
This story was written by Joseph Weisenthal.
How does Thomson Reuters (NASDAQ: TRIN) plan on gaining market share away from Bloomberg? It pretty much comes down to price, according to this NYT profile of the company's plans. The hope is that Bloomberg's premium price and alleged inflexibility (it basically offers one expensive service, and that's it) prove to be an Achilles heal, and that Thomson Reuters can offer different services to different folks. Want the whole terminal with all the bells and whistles? You can get that, or you can get something more stripped down, a la carte with just the information you need. Some terminal subscriptions are priced as low as $25-$50.
-- Online Finance Portals?: Online financial portals like Google (NSDQ: GOOG) and Yahoo (NSDQ: YHOO) Finance aren't seen as a big threat (though anecdotally, whenever we're at a banking conference, even the pros have portfolios set up on Yahoo Finance, so it obviously scratches a major itch). On competition, Bloomberg Chairman Peter Graur told the paper: "My job is to worry, to take nothing for granted and make sure that we think about things in terms of humility Great companies have begun to believe their own press and hubris has killed them. My mission in life is to never let that happen." And yet when asked about future pressure from the online financial sites, he said: "I don't know how to answer that I really don't know how to answer that." Sound like he has more worrying to do.
By Joseph Weisenthal