Reuters now takeover target

Posted May 4th 2007 7:30AM by Douglas McIntyre
Filed under: Before the Bell, Deals, Industry, News Corp'B' (NWS), Dow Jones and Co (DJ)

Reuters (NASDAQ: RTRSY) says that it has been approached with a takeover bid. Its shares are up 30% on the news in London.

With Dow Jones (NYSE: DJ) currently in play after a 67% premium bid from News Corp (NYSE: NWS), perhaps no one should be surprised. It appears that financial news content is getting new respect and a higher valuation than the market has given it over the last several years.

Unlike Dow Jones, where the total value of the transaction would be $5 billion, Reuters already has a market cap of over $12 billion, so a deal would probably be north of the $15 billion mark.

Reuters has one of the world's largest news services and and competes with Bloomberg in the trading terminal business. Last year, the company's revenues were over $5 billion.

Douglas A. McIntyre is a partner at 24/7 Wall St.

Tags: dj, nws, rtrsy