Bloomberg's “snooping” scandal failed to prevent the financial-data specialist increasing its dominance over Thomson Reuters in 2013 as clients continued to use its $20,000-a-year (£12,000) terminals.
The US company, which was founded by former New York mayor Michael Bloomberg in 1982, was forced into making a series of apologies last May when it admitted letting its reporters use confidential information as they worked on stories.
Banks including Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan were among those targeted and the Bank of England described it as “reprehensible”.
Despite this, estimates from analysis firm Burton-Taylor show that Bloomberg’s worldwide financial markets revenues actually grew from $7.9 billion to $8.2 billion last year while Thomson Reuters fell from $7.5 billion to $7 billion.
Douglas B Taylor, founder and managing partner at Burton-Taylor, said: “In a market that has shown only a 2.29% compound annual growth over the last five-years, Bloomberg continues to outperform with 5.77% revenue growth over the same period, supported by increases in their terminal population from 285,000 to nearly 319,000.”
Even though Thomson Reuters’ total revenues were significantly higher than its rival last year — at an estimated $13 billion compared to Bloomberg’s estimated $8.3 billion — the data shows that Bloomberg is winning the head-to-head battle.
Alex DeGroote, analysts at Panmure Gordon, said: “Bloomberg has been taking market share for some time. It used to be a rarity in the City to see Bloomberg terminals but now they’re everywhere. The Reuters brand has been downgraded under Thomson while Bloomberg is on the up and up.”
The news is not all bleak for Thomson Reuters, which in October said that new sales of its financial terminals outpaced cancellations in the third quarter for the first time since 2011.
