Publisher's Synopsis
"Breaking News is a riveting insider account of what went wrong in one of the world′s most successful companies. A brilliantly researched story, told with style and pace. Read it and heed the warnings."
—Tim Sebastian, best–selling novelist, international broadcaster and former Reuters correspondent.
Breaking News is the first book to expose the sorry tale of Reuters precipitous fall from grace. It is an incredible story of arrogance, missed opportunities, the loss of a dominant global market position and, ultimately, of a share price in freefall. This epic story begins with a businessman and would–be banker from Germany who becomes a successful journalist, and ends with a former New York mergers and acquisitions lawyer taking over a beleaguered business from a bunch of journalists who thought they had become bankers.
Breaking News is an in–depth look at Reuters dramatic reversal of fortune, based on the authors’ own experience and interviews with dozens of current and former senior Reuters staff, as well as competitors, city analysts and the bankers, brokers, editors and others who comprise Reuters client base. Mooney and Simpson examine Reuters initial runaway success in exploiting new technology in the financial information markets, how this bred complacency and consequently led to the disastrous failure to meet the challenge of competition from Bloomberg. They also shed light on a host of other shortcomings including a doomed internet strategy, muddles over new technology, a severe loss of entrepreneurial drive and an increasingly self–indulgent senior management team.
