The Thomson Corporation was one of the world's largest information companies.
Thomson was active in financial services, healthcare sectors, law, science & technology research, and tax & accounting sectors. The company operated through five segments (2007 onwards):
Thomson FinancialThomson Financial was an arm of The Thomson Corporation, which was one of the world's leading information companies, focused on providing integrated information solutions to business and professional customers...
,
Thomson HealthcareThomson Healthcare was one of the five operating divisions of the Thomson Corporation unitl 2008. Following the merger of Thomson with Reuters to form Thomson Reuters in 2008, it became the healthcare business unit of the new company....
,
Thomson Legal,
Thomson ScientificThomson Scientific was one of the five operating divisions of The Thomson Corporation until 2008. Following the merger of Thomson with Reuters to form Thomson Reuters in 2008, it became the Scientific business unit of the new company. In 2009, the Scientific business came together with the...
, and
Thomson Tax & Accounting.
Until 2007, Thomson was also one of the world's leading providers of higher education textbooks, academic information solutions and reference materials. On October 26, 2006, Thomson announced the proposed sale of its
Thomson Learning assets. In May 2007, Thomson Learning was acquired by
Apax PartnersApax Partners LLP is a global private equity and venture capital firm, headquartered in London. The company also operates out of eight other offices in New York, Hong Kong, Mumbai, Tel-Aviv, Madrid, Stockholm, Milan and Munich. The firm, including its various predecessors, have raised...
and subsequently renamed
Cengage LearningCengage Learning is a publisher of print and digital information services for the academic, professional and library markets, and delivers customized learning solutions for colleges, universities, professors, students, libraries, government agencies, corporations and professionals around the...
in July. The Thomson Learning brand was used through the end of August, 2007.
Subsequently, on October 15, 2007,
Educational Testing ServiceEducational Testing Service , founded in 1947, is the world's largest private nonprofit educational testing and assessment organization...
(ETS), the world leader in educational research and assessment, finalized acquisition of Thomson's
PrometricPrometric is a U.S. company in the test administration industry. Prometric operates a test center network composed of over 10,000 sites in 160 countries...
. Thomson sold its global network of testing centers in 135 countries, for a reported $435 million. Prometric now operates as a wholly owned subsidiary of ETS.
On May 15, 2007, The Thomson Corporation reached an agreement with
ReutersReuters is a news agency headquartered in New York City. Until 2008 the Reuters news agency formed part of a British independent company, Reuters Group plc, which was also a provider of financial market data...
to combine the two companies, a deal valued at $17.2 billion. On 17 April 2008 the new company was created under the name of
Thomson ReutersThomson Reuters Corporation is a provider of information for the world's businesses and professionals and is created by the Thomson Corporation's purchase of Reuters Group on 17 April 2008. Thomson Reuters is headquartered at 3 Times Square, New York City, USA...
. The new CEO of Thomson Reuters is
Tom GlocerTom Glocer is the CEO of Thomson Reuters and former CEO of Reuters.-Biography:Glocer joined Reuters Group in 1993 as Vice President and Deputy Counsel, Reuters America...
, the former head of Reuters, while the chairman is David Thomson formerly of the Thomson Corporation.
Although officially a Canadian company, Thomson was run from its operational headquarters in
Stamford, ConnecticutStamford is a city in Fairfield County, Connecticut, United States. According to the 2010 census, the population of the city is 122,643, making it the fourth largest city in the state and the eighth largest city in New England...
, in the United States, though it remained Canadian owned.
History
Since its founding by
Roy Thomson, 1st Baron Thomson of FleetRoy Herbert Thomson, 1st Baron Thomson of Fleet GBE was a Canadian newspaper proprietor and media entrepreneur.-Career:...
, Thomson's history has developed alongside the media age. By the end of the 1950s, Thomson had grown from a single
CanadianCanada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
newspaper,
The Timmins Daily Press, into a global media concern. It held several prominent newspapers in the
United KingdomThe United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
, including
The Sunday TimesThe Sunday Times is a Sunday broadsheet newspaper, distributed in the United Kingdom. The Sunday Times is published by Times Newspapers Ltd, a subsidiary of News International, which is in turn owned by News Corporation. Times Newspapers also owns The Times, but the two papers were founded...
and
The ScotsmanThe Scotsman is a British newspaper, published in Edinburgh.As of August 2011 it had an audited circulation of 38,423, down from about 100,000 in the 1980s....
, and it owned
Scottish TelevisionScottish Television is Scotland's largest ITV franchisee, and has held the ITV franchise for Central Scotland since 31 August 1957. It is the second oldest ITV franchisee still active...
.
In the 1960s, Thomson's publishing realm expanded further to include Thomson Publication (UK), a consumer magazine and book publishing house, and
The TimesThe Times is a British daily national newspaper, first published in London in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register . The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary since 1981 of News International...
. In 1965, Thomson Newspapers, Ltd. was formed as a publicly traded company in Canada. Roy Thomson's prolific endeavors in publishing had earned him a hereditary title, Lord Thomson of Fleet. Yet, Thomson's interests moved beyond publishing with the creation of Thomson Travel and acquisition of
Britannia AirwaysBritannia Airways was the largest charter airline in the United Kingdom, rebranded as Thomsonfly in 2005. Its main bases were Gatwick, London Luton, Birmingham, Manchester, Newcastle and Glasgow...
in 1965 and 1971, and a foray into a consortium exploring the
North SeaIn the southwest, beyond the Straits of Dover, the North Sea becomes the English Channel connecting to the Atlantic Ocean. In the east, it connects to the Baltic Sea via the Skagerrak and Kattegat, narrow straits that separate Denmark from Norway and Sweden respectively...
for oil and gas. Thomson used its oil profits to buy small newspapers in the United States, starting with the acquisition of
Brush-Moore NewspapersBrush-Moore Newspapers, Inc. was a United States newspaper group based in Ohio which had its origins in 1923 and was sold to Thomson Newspapers in 1967 for $72 million, the largest ever newspaper transaction at that time....
in 1967 for $72 million, at the time the largest sale of newspapers.
[Newspapers: Strength in the Afternoon, Time (magazine)]Time is an American news magazine. A European edition is published from London. Time Europe covers the Middle East, Africa and, since 2003, Latin America. An Asian edition is based in Hong Kong...
, September 8, 1967
By the end of the 1970s, Thomson Newspapers' circulation in the United States had surpassed the 1 million mark. The merger of Thomson Newspapers and the International
Thomson OrganizationInternational Thomson Organization was a development of the commercial empire founded by Lord Thomson of Fleet . It was formed in 1978 as a holding company for interests in publishing, travel, and natural resources...
in 1989 created The Thomson Corporation.
Over the years, the company has withdrawn from its holdings in the oil and gas business, the travel industry and department stores.
When
Kenneth ThomsonKenneth Thomson, 2nd Baron Thomson of Fleet , in Canada known as Ken Thomson, was a Canadian businessman and art collector who, at the time of his death, was the richest person in Canada, and the ninth richest person in the world, according to Forbes.com, with assets of approximately US $17.9...
took over from his father Roy in 1976, the company was worth about $500 million. At Kenneth's death in June 2006, the company was valued at about $29.3 billion.
Transition to business information
In 1978, the acquisition of Wadsworth Publishing provided Thomson with its first entry into specialized information, college textbooks, and professional books. (In 2007, Thomson Learning, including the Wadsworth imprint, was sold and renamed as
Cengage LearningCengage Learning is a publisher of print and digital information services for the academic, professional and library markets, and delivers customized learning solutions for colleges, universities, professors, students, libraries, government agencies, corporations and professionals around the...
.)
Starting in the mid-1990s, Thomson invested further in specialized information services (but this time providing them in digital format) and began selling off its newspapers. That was about the time Richard J. Harrington, an accountant, became chief executive officer of the company. One of the first moves came when Thomson spent $3.4 billion to acquire the West Publishing Company, a legal information provider in Eagan, MN.
In recent years, Thomson provided much of the specialized information content the world's financial, legal, research and medical organizations rely on every day to make business-critical decisions and drive innovation. While it remained a
publishingPublishing is the process of production and dissemination of literature or information—the activity of making information available to the general public...
company, early and aggressive investment in electronic delivery had become a key company goal.
"Except for its educational division, which still publishes a substantial number of conventional textbooks, Thomson had the good fortune to move into these businesses as customers were demanding electronic delivery of their information," according to a July 3, 2006 article in
The New York TimesThe New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
. "In some markets, Thomson was able to move past other players who were more cautious about digital conversion."
Brands
Some of Thomson's brands are better known than the company name itself. Its brands include
WestlawWestlaw is one of the primary online legal research services for lawyers and legal professionals in the United States and is a part of West. In addition, it provides proprietary database services...
,
FindLawFindLaw is a business of Thomson Reuters that provides online legal information and online marketing services for law firms. FindLaw was created by Stacy Stern, Martin Roscheisen and Tim Stanley in 1995, and was acquired by Thomson West in 2001....
,
BarBriBarBri is a company in the United States that offers a widely used bar exam preparation course. A majority of American recipients of a Juris Doctor degree attend a six-week BarBri course, which features lectures by law professors on the six major areas covered on the Multistate Bar Examination —...
, Physician's Desk Reference, RIA, Tax and Accounting (tax and accounting software and services for Accountants) Creatives Solutions, Quickfinder, DISEASEDEX, DrugREAX, Medstat, Thomson First Call, Checkpoint,
EndNoteEndNote is a commercial reference management software package, used to manage bibliographies and references when writing essays and articles. It is produced by Thomson Reuters.- Features :...
, Derwent World Patent Index, SAEGIS,
MicropatentMicropatent is a subsidiary of the Thomson Corporation . It is a commercial source for online patent and trademark information...
, Aureka, Faxpat, OptiPat, Just Files, Corporate Intelligence,
InfoTracInfoTrac is a trademark referenced to full-text databases produced by Gale, a part of Cengage Learning. InfoTrac databases features a wide variety of content from academic journals and general magazines...
, Delphion, Arco Test Prep, Peterson's Directories, TradeWeb,
Web of ScienceISI Web of Knowledge is an academic citation indexing and search service, which is combined with web linking and provided by Thomson Reuters. Web of Knowledge coverage encompasses the sciences, social sciences, arts and humanities. It provides bibliographic content and the tools to access, analyze,...
and the
Arden ShakespeareThe Arden Shakespeare is a long-running series of scholarly editions of the works of William Shakespeare. It presents fully edited modern-spelling editions of the plays and poems, with lengthy introductions and full commentaries...
. Thomson formerly owned
Jane's Information GroupJane's Information Group is a publishing company specializing in transportation and military topics.-History:It was founded by Fred T...
. These information sources are produced by the many companies of Thomson, including West Publishing,
Thomson FinancialThomson Financial was an arm of The Thomson Corporation, which was one of the world's leading information companies, focused on providing integrated information solutions to business and professional customers...
,
ISIThe Institute for Scientific Information was founded by Eugene Garfield in 1960. It was acquired by Thomson Scientific & Healthcare in 1992, became known as Thomson ISI and now is part of the Healthcare & Science business of the multi-billion dollar Thomson Reuters Corporation.ISI offered...
,
Thomson GaleGale is an educational publishing company based in Farmington Hills, Michigan, the United States, in the western suburbs of Detroit. It was part of the Thomson Learning division of the Thomson Corporation, a Canadian company, but became part of Cengage Learning in 2007.The company, formerly known...
,
Dialog CorporationDialog is an online information service owned by ProQuest, who acquired it from Thomson Reuters in mid-2008.Dialog was one of the predecessors of the World Wide Web as a provider of information, though not in form. The earliest form of the Dialog system was completed in 1966 under the direction of...
, Brookers, Carswell, CCBN, Course Technology, Gardiner-Caldwell,
IHIInformation Holdings Inc. was a company listed on the NYSE until its merger with The Thomson Corporation in November 2004. Its 2003 revenues were approximately $81 million....
, Lawbook Co,
WadsworthCengage Learning is a publisher of print and digital information services for the academic, professional and library markets, and delivers customized learning solutions for colleges, universities, professors, students, libraries, government agencies, corporations and professionals around the...
, Thomson CompuMark, and
Sweet & MaxwellSweet & Maxwell is a British publisher specialising in legal publications. It joined the Associated Book Publishers in 1969; ABP was purchased by the Thomson Organization in 1987, and is now part of Thomson Reuters. Its British group includes W. Green in Scotland and Round Hall in Ireland...
.
In 2003, the Thomson Corporation bought the
Chilton automotive assetsChilton Company is a former publishing company, most famous for its trade magazines, and automotive manuals. It also provided conference and market research services to a wide variety of industries...
.
In late 2004, the company sold its Thomson Media group to
InvestcorpInvestcorp is a manager of alternative investment products, serving high-net-worth private and institutional clients. Its principal client base is in the six countries of the Gulf Co-operation Council, but it also has institutional clients in North America and Europe...
. The B2B publishing group, which features such titles as
American BankerAmerican Banker is a daily trade newspaper covering the financial services industry. Founded in 1836and based in New York, American Banker has approximately 50 reporters and editors in six U.S. cities who monitor developments and breaking news affecting banks...
,
National Mortgage NewsNational Mortgage News is a weekly newspaper covering the mortgage sector in the United States. Its editorial director is Mark Fogarty, and its publisher is Tim Murphy. National Mortgage News is owned by SourceMedia.-History:...
and
The Bond BuyerThe Bond Buyer is a century-old daily national trade newspaper based in New York City and focused on covering the municipal bond industry. It is published Monday through Friday, except holidays...
, is now known as
SourceMediaSourceMedia is a mid-sized business-to-business media solution company owned by Investcorp. Formerly the Thomson Media division of The Thomson Corporation, SourceMedia was sold by its parent company in 2004....
.
In October 2006, the company confirmed it would sell the Thomson Learning market group in three parts. The first part, corporate education and training (NETg), has agreed to be sold to Skillsoft for $285 million. Apax announced its acquisition of Thomson's higher education business on May 11, 2007, for $7.5 billion in cash assets.
Thomson had divested many of its traditional media assets – or combined them with digital products – and had moved toward a larger reliance on information technology services and products.
Corporate governance
Members of the last
board of directorsA board of directors is a body of elected or appointed members who jointly oversee the activities of a company or organization. Other names include board of governors, board of managers, board of regents, board of trustees, and board of visitors...
of Thomson were as follows: David K.R. Thomson (chairman of the board since 2002), W. Geoffrey Beattie,
Richard HarringtonRichard Harrington is a Welsh actor. Harrington was born in Merthyr Tydfil. He has had starring roles in Bleak House and Jimmy McGovern's Gunpowder, Treason & Plot...
, Ron Barbaro, Mary Cirillo, Robert Daleo, Steven Denning, Maureen Darkes,
Roger MartinRoger Martin is Dean of the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto and an author of several business books. Martin has originated several important business concepts in use today, including integrative thinking...
, Vance Opperman,
John M. ThompsonJohn M. Thompson is the non-executive Chairman of the Board of Toronto-Dominion Bank Financial Corporation . He has held the position of Director at TDBFC since 1988 and has been chairman of the board since 2003....
,
Peter ThomsonPeter William Thomson is an Australian professional golfer. He is best remembered for his five wins in The Open Championship.Thomson was born in Brunswick, Australia. His Open Championship wins came in 1954, 1955, 1956, 1958, and 1965...
,
Richard ThomsonRichard Murray Thomson, is a Canadian banker. He earned a Bachelor of Arts and Science degree in Engineering from the University of Toronto and a Master of Business Administration from Harvard Business School....
, and
John A. ToryJohn Arnold Tory, QC was a Canadian lawyer and corporate executive. Born in Toronto, he was one of two sons of John Stewart Donald Tory...
.
The Thomson family owned 70% of the company.
When
Kenneth ThomsonKenneth Thomson, 2nd Baron Thomson of Fleet , in Canada known as Ken Thomson, was a Canadian businessman and art collector who, at the time of his death, was the richest person in Canada, and the ninth richest person in the world, according to Forbes.com, with assets of approximately US $17.9...
died in June 2006, control of the family fortune passed on to
David K.R. ThomsonDavid Kenneth Roy Thomson, 3rd Baron Thomson of Fleet is a Canadian media magnate. He is the son of the late Kenneth Thomson, 2nd Baron Thomson of Fleet and his siblings are actress Taylor Thomson and Peter Thomson...
under a plan put together decades earlier by company founder
Roy ThomsonRoy Herbert Thomson, 1st Baron Thomson of Fleet GBE was a Canadian newspaper proprietor and media entrepreneur.-Career:...
.
"David, my grandson, will have to take his part in the running of the Organisation and David's son, too," Roy wrote in his 1975 autobiography. "With the fortune that we will leave to them go also responsibilities. These Thomson boys that come after Ken are not going to be able, even if they want to, to shrug off these responsibilities."
The Thomson family controlled The Thomson Corporation through a family-owned entity,
The Woodbridge CompanyThe Woodbridge Company Limited is a Canadian private holding company and the principal and controlling shareholder of Thomson Reuters...
, based in Toronto. (Along with 70% of Thomson Corporation, Woodbridge also owns a 40% stake in
CTVglobemediaCTVglobemedia , was one of Canada's largest private media companies. Its operations include newspaper publishing , television broadcasting and production , radio broadcasting , and their respective Internet properties.Originally established by BCE and the Thomson family in 2001 combining CTV Inc.,...
, which now owns
The Globe and MailThe Globe and Mail is a nationally distributed Canadian newspaper, based in Toronto and printed in six cities across the country. With a weekly readership of approximately 1 million, it is Canada's largest-circulation national newspaper and second-largest daily newspaper after the Toronto Star...
daily newspaper in Toronto and
CTVCTV Television Network is a Canadian English language television network and is owned by Bell Media. It is Canada's largest privately-owned network, and has consistently placed as Canada's top-rated network in total viewers and in key demographics since 2002, after several years trailing the rival...
, Canada's largest commercial TV network.) David K.R. Thomson and his brother, Peter J. Thomson, became co-chairmen of Woodbridge after their father's death.