Blackstone signs contract to buy F&R, staff in F&R are no doubt sitting ducks.
Expect 25-40% job cuts especially in all high cost centres. Employees (black)"stoned" to the exit door. Rumour is that severance package, service continuity benefits may be dishonored going by the weasel words of the reigning CEO.
This day 30th Jan will forever be remembered as the Black day in the history of Reuters.
I worked at TR for 10 years and I’m so glad to see I’m not alone in saying the company is rotten to the core. It started losing its wonderful culture about 4 years ago. Unfortunately it looks like Blackstone will be inheriting the most rotten of the rot. The good people have long since left or been retrenched. Only the poisonous pariahs and fake-it-till-you-make-its remain. If you can lie, backstab your colleagues, s--- up to management, pretend to be something you’re not and steal other people’s ideas you’ll most certainly capture present leaderships attention and most likely be promoted. If you keep your head down and don’t blow your own trumpet about the fact that people like you have quietly been keeping the company going all these years with your wealth of knowledge and your respect for the original Reuters ethos , you’ll most likely sink and be left to drown in your good principles. There are more leaders in this company than you can count. Too many chiefs... Gone are the good leaders, the Moftahs, Haworths and folk of that ilk. Those were good days when we truly walked the walk. Now we have racists, s-xists and cronyists ruling the roost. Sad but true. It’s all about how well you play the game.But there is life after TR. If you’re one of the ones to be given your walking papers consider it a blessing in disguise! There are better companies out there and your knowledge will not be wasted.
TR sending out one tiger and recruiting 10 cats the sending one rat and recruiting 10 mice gain sending one mouse and recruiting 10 c---roach this the new principle of recruiting people in TR , bur management never recognize 10,00000 c---roach never equal to one tiger ,
Even Bangalore office is impacted and i can hear the names coming fast and thick. But, LT remains intact. Same LT, which was functioning during TR and same now with new company, what impact this will have. Reducing workforce to help bottom-line is short term solution. Never for a Long Term problem.
Technology in TR is abandon ship there is no use to hanging on it
But in actual refentiv required more work force , but hey are doing this in sake of cost cutting
20K views. amazing. talking about a sinking brand....
You are crazy. There is no way 10k job will be gone within a three year Span. They will layoff upwards of 20% (3200) of core F&R people, and upwards of 30% (2400) of the rest (HR, finance, etc). That is grand total of 5600 people. The only way it would reach the quoted 10000 jobs is if certain parts of the business is jettisoned, or if the company goes bankrupt. Which is a reasonable possibility based on how much debt BS has saddled the company with.
Totally agree! HR, Finance and Senior Mgt should have been sacked way back but they kept s---ing and these guys will go with pockets full no accountability or whatsoever
Fact: word is from reputable internal sources (HR, finance, senior management, tranformation team), that 10,000 F&R staff will be let go from October 2018 onwards until the rationalisation is complete - expected in 2019
"massive raise", but lesser employee?
I only heard that the guy in the ugly green shirt is getting fired
Heard we are all getting a massive raise. so great
Re = reuters
fin = financial or fintech or whatever
itiv = inovative or definitive
sounds like a a cancer drug.
Someone made a lot of money inventing that!
I was trying to make sense out of the new name ' Refinitiv' Reuters Financial not sure what the last initials stand for though...
Sounds like those Consultancy Cies we see around :-)
No consultancy yet but we heard that they are pushing to get this done in August so that they start in clean sheets in September....
Any best guys?
Following the announcement below that new co will be called - Refinitiv. I also see DC will be CEO. Will he also be on the board ?
Looks like the same old guard will be in charge, which begs the question if it was under performing, sure some drastic change is required.
Any new on consultation period starting in Oct ?
Welcome in Refinitiv. Initially I thought that my colleagues were messing around... . Probably soon we gonna learn that entire rebranding will cost us ridiculous amount of money.
"According to the Wiktionary, "earnt" is correct but not common: This is an uncommon (<0.5% as common as earned in the British National Corpus) but entirely acceptable alternative form of the simple past and past participle earned"
Bit like me. Uncommon (and <0.5%) that seems to have enjoyed working for TR over the years.
Keep smiling. I am :)
Anon (and I am not John),
You many think you are all awesome, but based on human nature, and the general level of performance at TR, it’s likely you are average. In any case, it doesn't matter, the fact is that FR (esp FR) is a sinking ship.
Perhaps if you had worked elsewhere, especially in a higher performing company at some time over the last 20 years, you would be able to make more accurate comparisons.
Furthermore, while “earnt” is a real word, the more common word is earned.
Lastly, you shouldnt get all triggered by being called “dude”. Dude.
To 'john'. I am not a 'dude'. I have been there 20+ years and I have earnt my stripes. I have enjoyed most of my time here. I have not free-loaded. I believe I have given an amazing amount of energy and commitment to this company and got a lot back. For sure it is not the Reuters I joined in the 80s but, hey, times change. I have worked in other places too - mostly retail banks and government - so I know what to compare them too. What will be will be.
to amonymous latest in thread, all the below comments were in agreement and you say you dont recognise the company you st be working in a different company...
count down starts july first if not before...redundancies hitting hard and 10% is very unrealistic dude!!!
let's give you the benefit of doubt even if I'm sure and share same concern with people in here that it should be around 40% as we have to be at par with BB which generates 9 $ billions with less workforce, how come? answer: we have many opportunists around and no one does a sh***t thats where we end up because of incompetence and who you know instead of what you can bring
I don't recognise the company portrayed by many of the posts here. There seems to be a lot of bitterness for whatever reason. I worked there too, amongst some great people, and mostly enjoyed it. I expect there will be job cuts after the close. I doubt they will be anywhere near the scale reported in the posts here. My guess is 10% or so. We'll see. Keep smiling :)
Get out while you can.
Thomson Reuters is rotting to its core. How do i know it? I worked there for 15 years!. The company is very good at retaining the wrong type of people. Capable ones either leave voluntarily or get laid off. Only the ones that have nowhere to go stick around, kissing asses and talking nonsense in order to get another job. Just see how many 'Global Heads' this company has. They create all kinds of vague roles so that those losers can have a job, roles like 'Global Head of Innovation', 'Global Head of Process Improvement'. This company doesn't have enough people who know the actual stuff and do the actual work. What it has are fat global heads that b---s--- around as a career. As a former employee i feel bad for the hard working colleagues but i can't wait to see what happens to those fat global heads!
@1mwob, I hope you don't mind, I bumped your post to the front page so more people can see it. Here's the link: https://www.thelayoff.com/t/SSeWAvY
Last poster- in other words, keep riding that sinking ship waiting for a handout. Great attitude. Exactly how TR got to be the stunted bureaucracy it is. You demonstrate skills and traits that are well suited for future employment in unprofitalbe european “firms” and governmental agencies all over the world. Well done. Well done.
/sarc
I was unhappy with some things at TR and planned to leave in November 2018. Then Blackstone happened. I expect severances to last until April 2019, so, I decided to stick it out at least until then. My point is, working at TR is an option. None of us have to. We do a job and when we are done we go do something else. Keep your skills up and stay marketable so you can retain some control over what happens to you. Look at the job market to see what skills are in demand and find opportunities to build those skills into your work day (if that is possible). None of us are going to retire from Thomson Reuters, Thomson Reuters is just another entry on a resume.
So glad I did not stick around for this dumpster fire after Nov 2016's round of layoffs and abrupt office closures.
Hi John
That's exactly what I'm talking about below (see my two posts below). With the same old crew in place drilling into the ship's hull, they're bound to keep sinking further..
Is there any news on which parts of F&R are staying and which bits will go to the new company ?
Hi,
Just recently i heard from colleagues in EU that they had a couple of meetings with ELTs where they were advised not to suggest anything regarding structural changes and to keep focused.
Why not suggest? very weird?? I think they are doing their thing on their own to extend their legacy and ONLY choose those opportunists unfortunately especially that we are likely to go back to the old system, EMEA, ASIA, AMERICAS... all those trillion of $$ paid to consultants and then go back to square 0
Jerome,
Its going to take some time, esp if BS is going to do it right and not just salt and pepper layoffs like stupid old school TR.
If you dont start seeing teams merge by summer then there is an issue and BS is very stupid as well.
I suspect that as BS is in this to make money, and since there is no market to grow revenue, then they will, at some point, make brutal changes.
Nevertheless, TR remains a sinking ship, if even they make all the right changes, 50% of the regular staff, 75% of the managers, and all the contractors still need to go.. Your chances arent good.
Get the heck out... I did a while ago...
Quote Joeblo: "Replacing the top level and moving reporting chains to the US seems like a logical first move. It would make sense to start merging teams and then removing fat. Regardless, the fat needs to go, and there is fat at every layer"
Me: I agree! But I was expecting more - I was expecting BS to send in a bunch of their managers to operate on the ground. They should do that at least in high-cost centres. Taking over control of High Cost Local offices (at least top-20 centres) is absolutely vital. They should send in 2-3 efficient mgrs who can work impartially, and with urgency - and throw out the bad apples in Local "LT" teams who have been drilling a hole in the hull of this sinking ship.
The LT managers don't drill a hole on purpose - they do it through their incompetence - stalling good projects, being too risk averse, being too ready to shoot down good initiatives, doing underhand politics, not trusting proven people but instead trusting long-winded processes guaranteed to stall everything, wasting corporate resources by conducting thousands of meetings, traveling at the slightest excuse ("offsite meetings"), unnecessary "client visits" to other countries (somehow coinciding somehow with Long Weekends), and just being plain inefficient - not reading emails, not answering on time, not making decisions on time... the list is long.
As someone in the below thread was saying - there are quite a few in the LT whose very sanity is questionable.
"Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result" - is the definition of insanity. Blackstone should be insane to have made billions in investment (presumably expecting wonderful returns) - only to do nothing to manage, except layoffs. Unless they take control of the top cost centres and send in 2-3 mgrs to each office, the existing incompetent mgrs would continue sinking the ship further.
Hi Joe,
Everything to the US? what about UK I thought most of the decision makers are there as well, eventhough the top notch are based out of NY?
Jerome,
Replacing the top level and moving reporting chains to the US seems like a logical first move. It would make sense to start merging teams and then removing fat.
Regardless, the fat needs to go, and there is fat at every layer
Well to all guys below that dreamt of sunlit uplands ruled by efficient Blackstone managers -- I'm afraid you're in for a nasty surprise. Rumour has it that none of the ground level managers would change. Only superficial Ex-com level changes from Blackstone. How on earth can a company's deep rooted (inefficient) culture change, just because a bunch of people sitting around the board room change, beats me. Say good luck to y(our)selves!
Dubai announced the allocation today. No major surprises so far, most move into BS. Waiting for the firings to commence starting July.
Hi, in our region we had a town hall and they started staff allocation , i.e staff moving under F&R (Blackstone), they said that reporting lines will change and we shall be reporting to UK then NY where decision lies. Not sure what would happen to local leadership team but I think it's a good move if they remove all those unnecessary layers to become leaner.
just a matter of days and everything is out in day light
yes I heard about her since I'm involved in product development...good riddance and may the winds of change sweep the floor under their feet
count down started emails going out soon...may the force be with us! amen
You're all counting on your voices to be heard by the new employer through this portal, which is something very optimistic, sadly in such cases it s near impossible to reach out from such forums as they are "unofficial" and any source (internal or external) can post anonymously. Just a gentle reminder that you are all still employed by TR (one way or another) and spending time online reading about how close you can bag that fat check into your account will do nothing good to your work life. No matter how attractive it might seem to have all that money but remember that you'll need to find a new job because it will be enough for only a little time afterwards. Now we are all in the same state of confusion and expectation (positive, negative or a mix) but let me remind you that Blackstone is not TR, they have assets under management for more than 300 billion US Dollars, not to mention much much more employees than TR and market presence (in different domains but still), getting where they got is not a work of rash decisions and most definitely not from believing the a-- kissers you are referring to.
Instead of worrying about Blackstone and the new era ahead, I suggest you worry about getting the work done and possibly pushing to be heard and seen without enabling the managers to have any comment on your work, cause guess what, they will use anything and everything in their arsenal to fight for their survival no matter how good they might be, so do not give them an anything to use against you. Next if you are that much scared about your career and life after TR, then I suggest you start looking for other opportunities (but who are we kidding, most of you want this ship to sink just to collect the check, but what you fail to see is that their is a sh--ty market and no one is hiring and with the very limited/tailor experience you gained in F&R, good luck finding a job with all the other newly redundant employees out there. You think its only TR and Blackstone following this path, please think again and act on the basis of what is better for your continuity inside or outside TR)
P.S. I am not a manager and I have been in F&R for almost 6 years now and believe me I know what you're going through, but please see the bigger picture here and think about your career not only the money you "might" get if your role got redundant!