The title of the session at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, two weeks ago was “Media & Terrorism: Changing the Ground Rules”. But Tom Glocer’s contribution was less illuminating than the comments he made to an American journalist a few minutes later. And Tuesday’s full- year results announcement will continue the tradition.Reuters, which has just hired the Queen’s former press secretary to help it communicate with the markets, found 2002 to be truly an annus horribilis. Competition from the likes of Bloomberg and Thomson Financial was exacerbated by a recession in Reuters’ key markets of the City and Wall Street, where around 30,000 jobs have been lost in the last couple of years.To add insult to injury, a massive contract with Merrill Lynch, the giant American broker, was lost and the value of Reuters’ investment in two former star companies, Instinet and Tibco, collapsed. The group’s pre-tax profits are expected to fall from £304m last year to maybe as low as £65m.

After restructuring charges of more than £200m, goodwill writeoffs and other provisions, this could turn into a loss of maybe £500m The dividend is expected to be cut. And so are up to 1,000 jobs, bringing the cuts in the 18 months since Glocer took the helm to more than 3,000. Reuters shares, which have lost 90 per cent of their value in three years, are at an all-time low.But for seasoned Reuters watchers, little of this will be news. The hot scoop will come from what Glocer says about the company he wants Reuters to be, and what he is going to do to create it.In his Davos interview, Glocer made a telling statement. “The truth is, we’re in for a longer period of boring, fundamental restructuring What you are going to see … is a much more focused Reu- ters that isn’t at all ashamed to say we are first and foremost an information company.”This might not seem such a startling statement.

After all, Reuters was founded by Paul Julius Reuter in 1851 to transmit stock market prices over the new Calais-Dover cable, and grew from its tiny London office into the largest and most famous news vendor in the world. Its skills in financial information were behind its massive growth in the 1970s and 1980s, culminating in its flotation 15 years ago. And every chief executive until Glocer has been a journalist by background (Glocer is a lawyer).But more recently, Reuters decided it was not only in the business of collating and delivering information; it believed it could also build dealing systems for banks and write software for traders. It was as if British Airways thought flying aircraft was not enough – it had to manufacture them as well.Some of these investments – notably Tibco, the software group, and Instinet, the electronic trading business – were seen as the saviours of Reuters a few years ago.At the height of the technology boom, these two operations alone were worth more than $20bn (£12bn). Now Reuters’ Tibco holding is worth just $400m and its controlling stake in Instinet is priced at $850m.