EU opens monopoly abuse probe into Thomson Reuters

[November 10, 2009]  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.

The probe centers on real-time market datafeeds on trading prices that news and information provider Thomson Reuters supplies to financial customers.

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 that identify the securities and where they are traded.

Banks face "a long and costly procedure" to replace these codes by reconfiguring or rewriting their own software, regulators said.

There is no deadline to end the investigation. If officials find evidence of antitrust abuse, they can demand that a company change its behavior under threat of fines of up to 10 percent of its global turnover for every year that the business broke the law.

[Associated Press]

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