Reuters gets green light on Bridge takeover

'No monopoly here,' say anti-trust regulators...

US anti-trust regulators have given Reuters the go-ahead to take over the majority of Bridge Information Systems' assets. Reuters will now pay £190m for the divisions after it won the bidding for the bulk of the Bridge business after its rival put itself up for auction in February. The £190m will buy Reuters Bridge's US institutional securities businesses, including trading software, as well as Bridge Trading Technologies, the CRB Index, which tracks US commodity prices, and eBridge, which provides web-enabled solutions. Bridge announced it was to auction its assets after it filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on 15 February 2001. Reuters officially bid for the company on 13 April. At the time, a consortium of banks, which was thought to be involved in the auction process, warned that the news and information provider would hold a virtual monopoly in the financial trading software market.