Around the turn of the century my small company was acquired by Thomson Financial. Later, the Reuters merger occurred; a titanic mistake from which the vast subsequent decline dates. Two mediocre companies do not make one great company. For a time, life at 3XSq was frothy indeed. Then came the Eikon debacle: a moonshot to beat all moonshots, built on the delusion we could compete with the Bloomberg terminal. During this time, the Tax division was considered a tiny, boring, non-strategic backwater. No one knew or cared anything about it. Eikon limped into a sort-of life but never transformed the business as intended. This is why F&R was spun off as Refinitiv; and that spin-off was the clearest writing on the wall that David Thomson’s massive bet had failed. The company has been in slow-motion demolition ever since. You who remain are squabbling over the stale scraps left behind in a mostly abandoned ship. Meanwhile, life proceeds elsewhere.
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I hoped back in 2008 when Thomson announced its decision to buy Reuters that the deal would not go through because I saw exactly what was going to happen - that being massive layoffs and a radical change in the corporate culture that would not be for the better. To make matters worse, for a few years Reuters people were running the show and they know squat about finances. I retired earlier this year and am collecting my pension (thank God I was grandfathered in) as well as Social Security and I do not regret it at all. My heart breaks whenever I hear about friends of mine from TR who got laid off and are still too young to retire and are having a hard time finding other jobs. These people who were let go were TR veterans who knew their jobs well and were loyal employees.