Beyond the Headlines
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By Kate Burrows   
Sunday, 16 April 2006
smc Reuters believes a comprehensive growth strategy will help the company provide innovative services to financial professionals. Mike Steinharter heads its American operations.
Reuters believes a comprehensive growth strategy will help the company provide innovative services to financial professionals. Mike Steinharter heads its American operations.
Although consumers worldwide recognize Reuters as a prominent news organization, few fully realize the scope of its capabilities. Beyond providing editorial content to media outlets worldwide, Reuters provides integral information and research services to financial organizations, and essentially provides the insight they rely on to make strategic business decisions, says Mike Steinharter, president of Reuters Americas. “Although there is plenty of competition in this industry, we are still the No. 1 provider of information services,” he adds. “Our global presence gives us a fabulous advantage over our competitors, and the breadth of services we provide is a lot wider than most people realize.”

Steinharter adds that even the competition recognizes Reuters' position in the financial world. “We distribute through many of our competitors – competition is alive and well, and our Partners and Alliances program will be a key part of our strategy,” he says. “It really is all about the breadth and depth of services that we provide that make us truly unique. We are certainly not a one-size-fits-all solutions provider – we're much more complex than that, and can compete across many markets.”

Recognizing this advantage, leaders in finance look to Reuters for more than breaking news stories, Steinharter says. In its four separate divisions, the company has capabilities that extend far beyond the commonly held perception that it is purely a consumer news service. In reality, he says, the company offers several families of Web-based products and software that cater to financial experts.

Its largest division – sales and trading – provides analytical software and real-time information gathering services to professionals in equity and fixed income, sales, investments and portfolio management, he says. “For customers who need to make critical decisions regarding finances, this is the most efficient way to provide the information they need,” Steinharter says. “Our Web-based programs and products are more efficient for our customers and for us.”

The company's research and asset management division offers Reuters Knowledge, a program that Steinharter says is integral to the successful decision-making capabilities of its customers. Providing Web-based access to investment managers, he adds that customers subscribing to the program can simply log in using an ID to access investment reports, corporate credit data and other useful resources.

“Reuters Knowledge provides high-value content including post-spending data, estimates and research,” he explains. “Customers do not even have to buy a new server, they can just log on to obtain research from the street, estimates about companies – it's really a wonderful service.

“We're eventually going to move more in that direction, developing the area even further.”

Catering to back office users, Reuters' enterprise division provides real-time data and reports for IT and operations managers. “The enterprise services include both real-time and non -real-time data and data feeds, risk management services, financial services and even instant messaging services with chat rooms and full interoperability with AOL and MSN users,” Steinharter says.

Beyond the company's comprehensive financial services, it operates the media division, providing breaking news to the business world and consumers alike. Although it provides media-related content to agencies and consumers worldwide, Steinharter says, it remains the company's smallest operation, but also one of its fastest-growing areas.

And although the company has a number of developments in the works, Reuters recently announced that it would be the sole provider of information for Google Finance. “This development really increases our presence and our brand image,” he says. “Ultimately, it enables us to capitalize on our news proposition, in particular.”

By powering Google Finance, Steinharter continues, the company is able to demonstrate its capabilities in a highly visible manner. “When you're searching through Google Finance, you're actually on the Reuters site for news, and customers can truly see the power of Reuters,” he says. “And through this development, we have really enhanced our ability to sell advertising on our Web site -– it is currently the sixth-largest site on the Internet in terms of hits. It's an incredibly fast-growing area for us.”

To expand its growth propositions even further, the company has adopted a set of principles that encourage and guide the company on a strategic path of further growth. Reuters' four pillars of growth outline the ways in which the company seeks to enhance the quality of its services. The first pillar, focusing on electronic trading, describes the company's goal to focus on expanding in this area through further investments. “We're currently investing a great deal in building out the most robust cross-asset electronic trading platform in the world, with the highest breadth and depth of information available,” he says.

High-value content is another focus toward further growth, Steinharter says, and the company has been actively seeking new acquisitions and clients. “We just completed a deal with MasterCard to be the sole provider of post-spending pulse data,” he says. “We'll have an important role in helping them gain a better sense of retail spending.”

Moreover, its news division plays an integral role in this strategy, as well. Steinharter explains that the company is investing millions into its news division, and has plans to open three additional bureaus in the United States alone, which will open more than 90 jobs.

Focusing on the individual user, its enterprise division seeks to allow a customer access to a greater selection of historical data about competitors and clients. “We've had high levels of interest, especially from our bigger customers, because many users want to make quick analytical decisions based on historical data, as well,” he says. “We are offering a new commercial model, which allows customers to pay as they go.”

New markets, he continues, are Reuters' strategy to expand its geographic reach, along with its products and services. “To me, that is what makes this company truly unique,” he says. “It is our breadth of offerings – if you think that we're simply a market data company, you are completely missing it.”
 
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