You may have heard the name Thomson Financial Services or Thomson Corporation buzzing around our industry, but just who is Thomson? In a wordóit is an empire.
Thomson Financial Services (TFS) is a leading provider of financial information, research, analysis, and software to the worldwide financial community. TFS is part of The Thomson Corporation (TTC) and employs more than 7000 people in its 40 worldwide offices. TTC is based in Canada and has annual revenues of approximately $6 billion, which makes them one of the world's leading information and publishing companies. (To find out more about TTC, the parent company, access www.thomcorp. com.)
If all of that isn't enough to convince you that Thomson Financial Services is a huge organization, think about this: In May of last year, Pittsburgh Street in Boston, where Thomson's headquarters is located, was renamed Thomson Place.
A business unit known as TF Ventures handles Thomson Financial Services' venture investments. This group makes investments in venture stage companies that operate in spaces that are strategically important to Thomson Financial Services, including companies offering access to new or best-of-breed technologies and emerging markets. Recently, TFS added four firms to their investment portfolio: BankServ, CCBN.com, Cathox, and Meridian Emerging Markets.
A Bit o' History
Part of what is Thomson Financial Services today originally started as Technical Data Corp. (TDC). TDC was started in 1980 by Jeffrey Parker and Jody Morse, both formerly portfolio managers at Fidelity Investments. A year later, TDC sold their first subscription to BondData, an online service that offered analysis of the U.S. Treasury cash and futures market.
As TDC grew, the company began to develop software for portfolio management. (You may be familiar with the Yield Calculator). In 1982, a separate business was born, Business Research Corp (BRC). BRC built Investext, an electronic database of company and industry information that was available to clients over a private network.
A few years later, in 1986, International Thomson purchased both TDC and BRC and the two were combined to form Technical Data International Inc. In 1989 International Thomson Organization and Thomson Newspaper merged to form The Thomson Corporation.
A year later Thomson Corp. reorganized its Information Publishing Group, of which TFN is a part. Two years later, TFN merged the business units of TFI to form Thomson
Financial Services.
In 1994 Thomson Corp. reorganized again and the Information Publishing Group was divided into two groups: The Business, Education, and Information Group, and The Financial Professional Publishing Group. Thomson Financial Services and Thomson Professional publishing become part of the Financial Professional Publishing Group. A year later Thomson Financial Publishing acquired the Bank Services Division of R.L. Polk.
That's the Long History, Here's What's Happened in the Last Couple Years.
In January of last year, Faulkner & Gray, a publisher for the credit and debit card industry, acquired CTST, Inc., a leading organizer of card technology conferences, also known as CardTech/ SecurTech.
The following month, Thomson Financial Services acquired Fiduciary Communications Company, which was a leading disseminator of financial disclosure information in both print and electronic forms. A couple of months later, TFN acquired the publishing assets of DALBAR, Inc., a specialized research and publishing business based in Boston. The DALBAR publications were folded into TFS' Securities Data Publishing (SDP) division, increasing SDP's product line of information resources to more than fifty industry-specific newsletters, journals, magazines, CD-ROMs, directories, and related conferences.
That same month, in April, Thompson Financial Publishing acquired EDI World, Inc., which publishes Electronic Commerce World magazine and runs the annual Electronic Commerce World conference and exhibit. Around that time, TFN also entered into a definitive agreement to purchase Nelson Information, Inc., the brand leader of contact information in the institutional investment community.
In August 1998 Faulkner & Gray, which is part of Thomson Financial Services, acquired FutureBank®, a series of regional technology expositions for the community bank market. That same month, TFN made its fourteenth acquisition of the year and acquired DigiTRADE, an automated Internet and telephone-based trading and account management service.
Soon after, TFN acquired Rainmaker Information Services. Rainmaker is a Sydney-based provider of client management tools, contact information, and investment management performance data to investment managers and plan sponsors.
In January of this year, TF ventures, a new business unit focused on venture capital investments was formed. TF is charged with providing a third vector of growth to TFS' traditional model by pursuing venture capital investments, as mentioned above.
Last April TFN acquired Milwaukee-based Powell Publishing, publisher of DM Review, a monthly magazine targeted at the data warehouse and business intelligence market. This publication was folded into the Faulkner & Gray unit, incorporating DM Review into its Chicago-based EDI and Electronic Commerce publishing businesses.
Finally, on July 30, The Thomson Corporation agreed to sell its Thomson Financial Securities management (TFSM) unit to Pearson for $150 million. David Flaschen, President and CEO of Thomson Financial, commented, "The sale of TFSM is in line with Thomson Financial's strategy to sharpen its market focus. We are making substantive progress toward realigning our businesses by vertical market and creating new customer workflow solutions. Despite a history of solid growth and prospects for the future, TFSM's products and services are not integral to this effort."
As of August 1999 some business units of Thomson Financial include:
In addition, Thompson Financial Publishing products include ABA Key to Routing Numbers, ABA Financial Institutions Directory, ACH Participant Directory, Bankinfo.com, and EPICWare. (EPICWare consists of PC-based processing tools for increasing the efficiency with which MICR line data can be validated).
As you can see, the empire that is Thomson is vast, and would take many Green Sheets to fully profile. If you would like more information, visit the TFS Web site at www.tfn.com.
Copyright © The Green Sheet, Inc., 1999. All rights reserved.
First Published November 1, 1999
