EU Opens Monopoly Abuse Probe Into Thomson Reuters

AOIFE WHITE

BRUSSELS (AP) — EU antitrust regulators said Tuesday that they are investigating whether Thomson Reuters Corp. is breaking monopoly abuse rules by preventing customers from applying their own codes to financial market datafeeds.

Thomson Reuters said it would fully cooperate with the investigation.

The probe centers on real-time market datafeeds on trading prices that news and information provider Thomson Reuters supplies to financial customers. EU spokesman Jonathan Todd said it involves the data piped to banks' internal computer systems, not the company's terminals.

The European Commission says it wants to check if the company locks in customers because it may make it difficult for them to use their own or other software to translate the Reuters Instrument Codes (RIC) that identify the securities and where they are traded.

"The problem is the restriction that is placed on the use of the code, the fact that if you subscribe to the Thomson Reuters real-time market datafeed you're not allowed to use the identification codes alongside a feed from another service provider," Todd said.