Thomson Corporation
The Thomson Corporation was a media company that started as a Canadian newspaper publisher. The company was registered as a public joint stock company (public company) in the Commercial Register in Toronto, Ontario. The head office was located in Stamford, in the U.S. state of Connecticut.
After taking over the world's biggest news agency Reuters the newly formed group called since April 17, 2008 Thomson Reuters and is headquartered in New York.
Company Profile
The original newspaper publisher was transformed into a major supplier of electronic information and services. Roy Herbert Thomson, 1st Baron Thomson of Fleet, had founded the company. The name of the company was established in 1989 after the merger of Thomson Newspapers and the International Thomson Organization.
The group was 70 percent owned by the Canadian Thomson family and was controlled by the family owned The Woodbridge Company of Toronto.
The common shares of The Thomson Corporation were listed on the stock exchanges of New York and Toronto (TSX: TOC, NYSE: TOC).
The Thomson Corporation has recently been a provider of information services and software applications for over 20 million users in the fields of law, tax, accounting, financial services, higher education, reference information, corporate training and assessment within enterprises, scientific research and health care.
The five main global companies of The Thomson Corporation were:
- Thomson Legal
- Thomson Tax and Accounting
- Thomson Financial
- Thomson Scientific
- Thomson Healthcare
The area of Thomson Learning was sold in May 2007 to Apax Partners and later renamed Cengage Learning.
History
The company was founded by Roy Herbert Thomson. He obtained in 1934 the Canadian newspaper, The Timmins Press. Until the late 1950s the company had grown into a global media conglomerate. She had several well-known newspapers in the UK including The Sunday Times and The Scotsman and Scottish Television.
In the 1960s, continued to expand Thomson Publishing Group and also included Thomson Publication (UK) a, a publisher of popular magazines and books as well as owner of The Times in London. In 1965, Thomson Newspapers, Ltd.. a publicly traded company in Canada. Roy Thomson was awarded the hereditary peerage title of Baron Thomson of Fleet. Thomson's business interests ranged now about the publishing into. In 1965 Thomson Travel. In the same year the airline Britannia Airways was taken over. In 1971 the company participated in a consortium that explored the North Sea in search of oil and gas.
The late 1970s was the circulation of newspapers belonging to Thomson in the U.S., with over one million. Your name took over the company in 1989 at the occasion of the union of Thomson Newspapers and the International Thomson Organization.
Over time, the company withdrew from the oil and gas business. Successor to the company's founder, died in 1976 was Kenneth Thomson, 2nd Baron Thomson of Fleet.
1978 Thomson joined through the acquisition of Wadsworth Publishing in the market of specialized information, the market for college text books and reference books for working professionals a.
Since the mid- 1990s, Thomson invested further into specialized information services that were now available in digital format, and began his newspapers to sell. Around this time was Richard J. Harrington, an accountant, chief executive officer of the company. One of the first actions in this strategy was the purchase of the legal publisher West Group Publishing Company for $ 3.4 billion.
Thomson gave a large part of the specialized information necessary legal, research and medical organizations around the world daily. Although the company remains a publishing group, early and aggressive investments in electronic forms of distribution are a key element of corporate strategy.
"With the exception of the educational division, which still produces conventional textbooks in large numbers, Thomson had the good fortune to grow just at the time in these areas, as customers demanded the delivery of information in electronic form ... succeeded in some markets it to surpass Thomson, other market participants, who had been cautious in their investments in digitization. "
Kenneth Thomson died in June 2006. Chairman was then his son David Thomson.
The Thomson Group had announced its intention in May 2007 to take over the Reuters news agency. The purchase price should be converted to 12.9 billion euros.
Main competitors
- Bloomberg L.P.
- Reed Elsevier
- Springer -Verlag