Thomson Bulks Up with TradeWeb Acquisition

April 8, 2004 (PLANSPONSOR.com) - Electronic publisher Thomson Corp said on Thursday it would buy online bond trading platform TradeWeb Group LLC for an initial $385 million in cash, bolstering its reach and muscle in the fixed-income market.

Thomson will buy closely held TradeWeb from a group of eight large investment banks: Credit Suisse First Boston, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley, J.P. Morgan, and Deutsche Bank, Reuters reported.

In addition to the purchase price, Thomson also agreed to pay up to $150 million over the next three years, hinging on growth targets.

TradeWeb employs an Internet-based technology to provide fixed-income market data and let fund managers and other institutions trade bonds with dealers around the world. The companies said more than $85 billion in securities change hands through TradeWeb every business day and more than $43 trillion in bond trades have been executed over its network since 1998.

Thomson said it would combine the content and analytics of its Thomson One Yield product with TradeWeb to reach further into the fixed income market and into new geographic areas.

TradeWeb will be merged into Thomson Financial, which competes with Reuters Group Plc and Bloomberg LP to sell real-time information and market data to banks, brokerages and fund managers worldwide.

«