The financial community has focused on the executive house cleaning at the Pointing to the division's fourth consecutive quarter of double-digit growth, CFO Robert Daleo commented, "This business is tracking exactly to what we told you it would be doing a year ago." Daleo pointed to strong performance for electronic filing and tax software, the Checkpoint research platform and indirect tax products.
Meanwhile, CEO Tom Glocer confined his comments to the reorganization at the company that stemmed from the Markets trouble. Markets sells the tools used by financial services companies and it was announced on July 21 that six executives, including the unit's CEO Devin Wening, had decided to leave the firm. Financial news publications generally said Wening had been viewed as a possible successor to Glocer and that the restructuring stemmed from the Thomson family's unhappiness with the division's performance. They also opined Glocer's job as in peril if he can't right the organization.
Glocer pictured the reorganization as simply accelerating a plan to flatten the Thomson Reuters management structure. And he left no doubts about why the management team left. "These changes will simplify the business. I also changed out members of the senior management team, including Devin Wening," he said.
Not only is Glocer handling Wening's duties, but when asked how long that would continue, he gave no indication that he planned to step out of that role within the next year. He also made it clear performance must improve or else more changes will be made. "We are driving an accountable performance structure and nothing speaks more strongly to this than last week's changes," Glocer commented.
