Thomson Reuters ties up with Wall Street chat service Symphony

By Jessica Toonkel

(Reuters) - Thomson Reuters Corp is partnering with Wall Street-backed chat service Symphony Communication Services LLC to enable users to chat and share data seamlessly, creating a more head-to-head competitor to Bloomberg LP.

The partnership, announced by Thomson Reuters and Symphony on Tuesday, brings together two competing messaging services for investment managers and traders.

It remains to be seen what effect the partnership will have on Bloomberg, which is a dominant provider of chat services in the financial services market, said Spencer Mindlin, an analyst with research firm Aite Group.

"I don’t think it's going to cause an immediate dip in the number of people signing up for Bloomberg terminals," he said. "This alliance may put additive pricing pressure on Bloomberg and its subscription fees charged to customers.”

A spokesman for Bloomberg did not immediately return a request for comment.

Starting later this year, users of Thomson Reuters' Eikon product will be able to share charts, news and data via Symphony's platform.

Eikon, the flagship product of Thomson Reuters, provides live data, news, analytics and trading tools to subscribers. Eikon's own messaging service, Eikon Messenger, connects more than 300,000 individuals in 30,000 companies.

"While Eikon users can already share Eikon content with counterparts via our strategic open Eikon Messenger platform, this partnership gives our customers the choice to extend these collaboration capabilities to the Symphony community," said Deb Walton, global managing director of customer propositions at Thomson Reuters.

Symphony was created in 2014 by a consortium of 15 financial institutions led by Goldman Sachs that came together in a joint effort to change the way traders communicate.

The service boasts 200,000 licensed users across 170 companies, including 40 top asset managers and 25 of the world's largest banks.

Tom Glocer, former chief executive of Thomson Reuters, is an adviser to Symphony's board.

(Reporting by Supantha Mukherjee in Bengaluru; Editing by Saumyadeb Chakrabarty)