The Women’s Foundation announced the launch of the 30% Club Hong Kong– a group of chairmen and business leaders who are committed to increasing the representation of women on Hong Kong corporate boards. The 30% Club was officially launched at an invitation-only event at the Asia Society, where the Chief Executive of Hong Kong, C.Y. Leung, gave a keynote address on women on boards, and more generally, the contribution of women in business to the Hong Kong economy.

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Last month, the 30% Club launched in Hong Kong and Thomson Reuters was there to support their efforts. We have had a long relationship with The Womens Foundation, who decided to bring the initiative, which started in London, to Hong Kong. Like the London the 30% Club, the group brings together chairmen and business leaders who are committed to increasing the representation of women on Hong Kong corporate boards. The 30% Club was officially launched at an invitation-only event at the Asia Society, where the Chief Executive of Hong Kong, C.Y. Leung, gave a keynote address on women on boards, and more generally, the contribution of women in business to the Hong Kong economy. (more…)

StartUp Britain’s Emma Jones takes the Reuters taxi challenge to tell us why almost half a million entrepreneurs think now is a great time to be starting a business in the UK.

When Thomson Reuters Elite UK was considering ways to strengthen the organizational culture, they decided to help a charity. They were hopeful that such a project would not only bring them closer together as a team, but also reinforce their commitment to charitable endeavors and enhance the pride they feel working here.

The group chose to support St. Mungo’s women’s homelessness strategy, which raises awareness about homelessness among women. As part of their involvement, they committed to fundraising and volunteering for an 18-month period. They began working with local professional photographer Georgina Cranston to produce a series of photographs, documented case studies and audio and video works for St. Mungo’s to help them educate others about the challenges facing women who are homeless and the resources available to them. In addition, they asked for support from across the company and helped collect additional money through quiz games and raffles.

They are now approaching the culmination of their 18 months of effort, in which they will stage a multimedia exhibition at the gallery@oxo, Oxo Tower Wharf in London, which will be open for public viewing from 14-18 November.

In total, more than 300 Thomson Reuters employees participated in this effort, and more than £70,000 was raised. And while they did succeed in strengthening the organizational culture, more importantly they are leaving St. Mungo’s with a visceral, powerful series of images, texts and videos that will be available for many years to come.

Since the financial crisis of 2008/09, increasing concerns about the weakened US economy have caused the Chinese government to prioritise Renminbi (RMB) internationalisation as a key step in its economic reform. In June 2012, China’s State Council declared that the country will speed up the opening of its financial market, including allowing qualified foreign institutions to invest in China with the yuan, and expanding the use of the yuan in overseas markets, such as cross-border settlement and as an international reserve currency.

At the City of London RMB initiative launch event in April this year, UK Chancellor Osborne stated that it is “the ambition of the British Government to make London a Western hub” for offshore RMB trading. London’s status as the next major RMB offshore centre seems logical – London is well positioned with its existing infrastructure, banking community and regulatory framework. However, there are still challenges to be addressed if London is to achieve this aspiration. (more…)

Last week, two lucky employees from London experienced a behind the scenes tour of the Williams F1 factory and headquarters to understand what really goes into the running of a highly competitive Formula One team. Jeremy Lawson, director of Strategic Accounts, EMEA – IP Sales, and Emma Rogers, eLearning developer, Knowledge Network- F&R, won the chance to visit our sponsored team’s headquarters at Grove in Oxfordshire, UK, after taking part in our ‘Power to Perform’ competition.

The ‘Power to Perform’ week was organised for our London offices in celebration of the 2012 Olympics ahead of the London 2012 Games. Employees took part in a week of fun sporting activities and speaking events to hear from guests from a variety of different sports related backgrounds on their inspirational and personal stories.  Our Olympic celebrations brought together employees from across the organization and the activities entertained, motivated and inspired all who took part.

So, where better place to learn first-hand about a motivated, technology driven and highly competitive business and sports team, than visiting the Williams F1 Team in their home environment? Emma and Jeremy enjoyed an action packed day including: (more…)

On Friday, June 29th, the Barbican Centre in London hosted the 2012 Apps For Good competition finals. The Apps For Good program teaches young people how to come up with and deliver mobile and Facebook applications that can make a real difference in the lives of us all. According to the Apps For Good team, there are currently 40 partner schools engaged across the UK, impacting over 1300 students. What’s more, over 100 schools and institutions are waiting to be involved!

I am unashamedly proud and thrilled to lead our Thomson Reuters efforts. This past year, we directly sponsored three schools in London financially and with tremendous mentors. We didn’t stop there.  The kids use the Google AppInventor program to create prototype versions of their idea on Android, and when Google decided to sunset the program and transfer it to MIT, the handoff was not clean. In fact, the kids were going to come back from their Christmas holidays with a system that wasn’t ready. I suggested that we would have a go at standing up the platform, and one of my mobile team members, Kevin Zimmerman in San Francisco, made it happen. I personally wanted to do more, and I was very fortunate to be able to do 2 hour Skype calls each month with different schools across the UK – and even visited one that will always be near and dear to me – Nelson Thomlinson in Wigton, Cumbria.

At the end of the program, there is a wonderful competition that takes place.  Teams submit their work to a panel that creates a short list in several sponsored categories.  The short list consists of two teams that come to London to present in a “Dragon’s Den” style competition in front of 5 judges.  Thomson Reuters sponsored the Information category, while other major companies involved in sponsorship included Dell, RIM, and Barclaycard. Some of the ideas are just amazing. The kids in the program range from 12-17 years old, and here is a sampling of some of the projects:  an app that helps you build confidence and work through tough times with motivational messages and critical help if you really hit a low; an app that lets you personally and privately monitor with your teacher your reading progress in books to prevent feeling badly for not understanding what you’re reading; and an app that lets you create visual notecards for studying for exams along with a community where you can share and reuse those notecards with other students. (more…)

Marcus Agius, chairman of Barclays, resigned today as the bank attempts to deal with its involvement in an interest rate fixing scandal. See which investors will be most affected.

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We have announced the results of our 39^th Extel Survey, displaying the leading Pan-European companies and professionals for Investor Relations.

The survey ran from 19 March to 4 May 2012 and voting was primarily conducted online. Our survey reflected the contribution of over 14,000 professionals from over 2,100 buyside firms, more than 2,500 analysts from 270 brokerage firms/research houses and nearly 800 of Europe’s largest quoted companies worldwide  Some of the prestigious names, listed as winners, included UBS, JP Morgan AM and Tudor Capita.

Our survey also identified a number of industry trends, which include:

• Increasing spread of commissions across more research providers, with 475 different firms receiving nominations in Extel this year
• Primacy of ‘independent’ thinking in what the buy-side want from brokerage research
• Growth of one-on-one meetings with buy-side and divisional directors at companies

We also announced the results of our UK Small & Mid-Cap survey, representing the contributions of 350 buyside firms in the industry.  That release can be seen here.

In total, over 450 awards were given to industry leaders across Europe, honoring equity, economics and strategy, and commodities market leaders.  The ceremony was hosted by key members of the financial community throughout Europe, including our own Jim Smith.

For a list of key winners and highlights, see the press release. To view the headline results visit www.extelsurveys.com.

Amid high-caliber research output and citation impact, analysis reveals region has unfilled potential to accelerate dementia cure.

Our IP and Science business recently announced findings that the quality of dementia research in the United Kingdom (UK) is second in the world only to the United States, despite the low number of scientists working in this field, and that finding a cure can be accelerated by increasing the number of dementia researchers and investment, according to work done using the Thomson Reuters Web of Knowledge. The findings are featured in an Alzheimer’s UK Research Report “Defeating Dementia.”

The results from the analysis reveal the UK published more research on dementia than any other country except the United States and ranks second in the world after Sweden in citation impact, which is the number of times UK research is referenced in dementia studies around the globe. Despite its high performance and influence, dementia research capacity in the UK is low when compared to cancer, stroke and heart disease. For every dementia research scientist there are six who work on cancer.

Read the full press release.

View the Alzheimer’s Research UK report, Defeating Dementia.