Commission market tests Thomson Reuters’ revised commitments

The European Commission is market testing Thomson Reuters’ commitments regarding its Reuters Instrument Codes (RICs). The commitments are to resolve the Commission’s concerns that Thomson Reuters is abusing its dominant position in the market for consolidated real-time datafeeds. RICs are used by financial institutions to identify securities and their trading locations. Among other uses, RICs are used to retrieve data from Thomson Reuters’ real-time datafeeds.

The Commission is of the view that Thomson Reuters may be prohibiting its customers from using the RICs to get data from alternative providers and cross-referencing the RICs to alternative codes by other suppliers. Such practices create and substantially heighten switching barriers for customers.

Thomson Reuters offers to allow customers to license additional RIC usage rights for switching purposes. In addition, customers may use RICs to retrieve data from alternative providers and Thomson Reuters will provide the necessary information to cross-reference RICs to alternative codes. The commitments improve upon an earlier proposal, which was found to be flawed in a first market test, by extending the scope of the license to cover all RICs and reducing the license fee.

Full content: EC Press Release

Related content: Coordination and Lock-In: Competition with Switching Costs and Network Effects

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