Thomson Financial, the information group, has spent the past two years changing its business model to help it fight in markets dominated by rivals Reuters and Bloomberg.

Donal Smith, chief operating officer in Europe, has been a driving force behind the change, which has integrated the 70-odd businesses bought during the technology boom under one umbrella, Thomson One. Since the integration, Thomson One has been looking for acquisitions and this year bought bond trading platform TradeWeb. The success of TradeWeb has boosted Thomson's revenues and enabled it to challenge Bloomberg's dominance of fixed-income trading and data.