Thomson Reuters & Canary Wharf

Trapped in between Canary Wharf's skyscrapers

London isn't much of a concrete jungle with sky scrappers shooting up right and left like New York, or so I thought! Today's visit to Thomson Reuters took me to me to Canary Wharf, London's business hub, which was more representative of the city's vibrant commercial scene. Hitherto, London didn't quite "wow" me like other big metropolises because most of its architecture was either traditional Victorian buildings or Amsterdam-like townhouses. The only exceptions were probably Piccadilly Circle, Oxford Street, or Leicester Square. Today, London proved me ignorant by revealing its Canary Wharf, which proved that London's hustle and bustle was just as intense as that of New York or Hong Kong.

The clocks in Canary Wharf

The Thomson Reuters visit took us through the history of the company from its 1800s techniques of carrying information to and fro different cities by flying pigeons to today's virtual transfer of information in a matter of nanoseconds. I truly admire the company's global scope of operations. With offices in 180 countries, Reuters has ears and eyes in every corner of the world to report the latest breaking news. One of the firm's senior managers gave us an example of how far Reuters is ahead of its competition. When the Lebanese-Israeli war of 2006 broke out, Reuters had 50 reporters who reported over 200 news stories in the first 2 hours of the war when other news agencies were still getting their reporters on planes to fly over to the Middle East.

Most of today's presentations focused on Reuters' merger with Thomson and how the two firms integrated their operations to make them the dominant player in the financial information sector. Reuters' platform puts the latest corporate news at the fingertips of investors, banks, and stock brokers. Reuters' main competitor is Bloomberg. These two players compete on such a niche market that requires such high start up capital and vast experience that the market barriers are quite high. Reuters' director revealed that the firm's next generation of technology would be computers that could read, interpret, and act on financial information in a fraction of the time it takes humans to so. In essence, humans could be considered obsolete in the future financial world.

My LBS colleagues in a Reuters meeting room

Although I acknowledge the importance of Reuters' financial services, what really brought me to the firm today was its journalistic excellence. Reuters is a pioneer in the media with its reporters putting their life on the line to reveal the truth. After the Egyptian Revolution, I have taken a particular interest in the power of news in shaping people's perceptions, ideas, and emotions towards certain events. I revere journalists for the ability to be in the right place at the right time to report the right information. For example, it was a Reuters reporter who was the first to report Howard Carter's discovery of King Tut's tomb in Egypt before other reporters could get their hand on the news. Who knows where this recent interest in journalism will lead, but I'm sure my passion for writing will linger on...

The river view in Canary Wharf

After the Reuters visit, I stuck around to discover Canary Wharf a bit. As a consequence, I ended up hitting the rush hour in the underground, which meant being crammed into the tube with a bunch of commuters back home, but it was all part of the London business lifestyle experience.