Reuters Names American as Next Leader
Reuters, the venerable media and information company, announced Wednesday that it has promoted the 41-year-old head of its U.S. division, attorney Tom Glocer, to serve as the company’s next chief executive.
Glocer, the first American to lead the 150-year-old company, will succeed Peter Job, who is to retire in July.
Currently chief executive of Reuters Information and Reuters America, Glocer is seen as having a good grasp of new-media technology. Media analysts say his appointment underlines the importance of markets in the U.S., where it derives more than a third of its annual sales.
“The United States is obviously an area where Reuters has probably the biggest growth opportunity in its core information business,” said Meg Geldens, a publications analyst for Merrill Lynch.
Geldens described Glocer as “a very clear and direct communicator, a very solid guy” whose youth would be an advantage. “This is one of several European companies that need a generational change.”
In trading on Nasdaq, Reuters shares rose $2.25 to $107.13.
Glocer will be expected to build on Reuters’ strong focus on Internet-related information services. The company reported a 16% jump in revenue for the third quarter ending Sept. 30, to $1.3 billion, with a particularly strong result at its electronic brokerage service Instinet. Profit rose sharply in the first half of 2000, the latest earnings figures available.
Reuters is expected to sell as much as 25% of its stake in Instinet, a service estimated to be worth at least $4.4 billion.
Glocer, a graduate of Yale Law School, joined Reuters in 1993 from the law firm Davis Polk & Wardwell, where he specialized in mergers and acquisitions.
Sunday Telegraph columnist Neil Bennett wrote over the weekend that Reuters had been “trawling the world” for suitable outside candidates but found a shortage. “The few people with the qualifications to run the company are all American and would demand at least $30 million to turn up for work,” he wrote.
Glocer joins Marjorie Scardino, chief executive of Pearson, which owns the Financial Times newspaper and the Economist magazine, as an American in charge of a top British media company.
