Marseilles from the floating containers was telegraphed from Crookhaven, and from Cork it was retransmitted to London. In this way, breaking news from Reuter arrived in the London telegraph a minimum of several hours before the same mail steamer that carried it across the Atlantic could reach Liverpool. These details are telling in giving an idea of the lengths and expense Paul Julius Reuter was willing to go to in order to ensure he had the earliest possible access to transatlantic news and be the first European source of developing news stories. This was far more than merely a nominal accomplishment, as evidenced by Reuters breaking the news story of the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, an event that in addition to its social and political import had a direct effect on the financial market.
Over the next several decades, Reuters expanded across European countries, and ultimately across continents, following the growing telegraph-accessible locations to the Far East and South America. In 1923, the agency became the first to send stock quotes via radio, transmitting them from London to Europe in Morse code. Reuters remained consistent in placing a priority on incorporating the newest technologies into their communications network, adopting the teleprinter to distribute stories to newspapers throughout London, and reinventing their own position in the market with the introduction of the computerized Reuters Stockmaster real-time price retrieval system in 1964. In 1973, President Nixon dismantled the Bretton Woods Agreement, which had obliged member nations to establish a fixed rate of external exchange by linking the rate to the gold standard. Reuters anticipated the widespread effects of the “Nixon shock” by creating and launching the Reuter Monitor Money Rates Services—an international foreign exchange network. The Reuter Monitor enabled contributing institutions to input their exchange rates and allowed subscribers to retrieve and view on video display terminals all of the participating banks’ exchange rates for each currency—information that had never before been accessible from a single source.
I was pleased and optimistic about joining the Reuters board, and remained longer than almost anyone else. When I felt it was time for me to move on, I gave my notice. I did not expect the response I received. “Pehr,” I was told, “you cannot leave the family. We would like to propose instead that you become a board member of our Founders Share Company.” I found that I did see Reuters as a family of sorts, and so I accepted that proposal, and several months later was asked to become chairman of the Founders Share Company board.
During the course of my three five-year terms on the FSC board, my high esteem for the company never faltered. It marked a significant part of my life, as I took very seriously the task of overseeing the company and ensuring that the Trust Principles were upheld and respected in the company’s conduct. In their essence, the principles are independence, integrity, and freedom from bias. Both the principles themselves and the importance of safeguarding them truly spoke to me. The model Reuters established appealed to my belief in the great importance of both ethical standards in the corporate world, and in the need to protect the free press, regardless of what that entailed. At times this even necessitated intervening in the actions of another director. When board member Rupert Murdoch went over the 15 percent ownership threshold for outside shareholders, for example, it was my responsibility to step in and directly challenge Murdoch’s actions. I will admit that after telling him it was unacceptable to pass the threshold and informing him that he must sell down, I held my breath to see if he would simply tell me to go to hell. But after several days, he did sell down, reducing his company shares to the appropriate and authorized amount.
After the end of my third five-year term (and having passed the three-term time limit) I was happy to accept the position of chairman of the board of the Founders Share Company and continue into the next decade with Reuters. I wanted to do everything in my power to keep the company on its course. It was a powerful and occasionally humbling experience to observe the many ways—great and small—in which the Reuters people evaluated and sometimes adjusted their own actions to ensure that they were in keeping with the Trust Principles.
On the evening of September 11, 2001, as a shaken world absorbed the news of the devastating terror attacks in the United States, David Wenig, Reuters president of Investment Banking and Brokerage Services, requested that the large electronic billboards outside of Reuters’ London office display an image of the American flag, to communicate England’s solidarity with America. Feedback came in from a number of editorial managers asking that the flag be removed, as it could be construed to be an indication of bias. I happened to be in New York on that day, visiting the Lazard financial management firm in my capacity as their senior advisor and managing director.
I had arrived at Lazard’s Rockefeller Center office quite early in the morning, and a colleague and a secretary were the only other people in the sixty-second-floor office. It was an absolutely beautiful day, cool and clear, the skyline of the city crisp and vivid against the bright blue sky. On one of the television monitors, I heard the breaking news that a plane had just hit a Manhattan skyscraper. The southern-facing exposure of the Lazard offices provides a bird’s-eye view of Manhattan from the East River to the Hudson. After hearing the news, my colleague and I went to the window from which we could clearly see a vast plume of brown smoke pouring from the north tower of the World Trade Center. At that moment, we saw a second plane approaching rapidly from the southwest. We stood shoulder to shoulder watching with disbelief as the plane hit the south tower, sending a massive fireball shooting into the sky. I don’t believe either of us spoke—what was there to say? The sight was so dramatic—so viscerally brutal—it is virtually impossible to convey to anyone who did not see it with their own eyes.
After the towers collapsed, the scene in lower Manhattan was one of utter devastation, and the scale of human suffering unbearable. I was not only deeply shaken by what I had seen, I was not at all sure that more attacks were not on the way. I had no intention of getting into the elevator to descend sixty-two floors, so I remained where I was. My colleague followed suit. At about 11 a.m., I heard voices and saw several policemen entering the office. They seemed surprised to see us, as the building had been closed off and no one was supposed to be inside. My colleague and I took the sixy-two-floor elevator ride in silence, emerging in the plaza with no idea where to go or what to do. Like countless others, I was marooned, unable to travel out of the city. I followed the events surrounding the London Reuters’ office and the American flag by telephone from my hotel. I was both touched by their impulse to display solidarity and impressed with their difficult decision to take the flag down. To me, it represented the pinnacle of integrity, and embodied everything I admired about the organization.
In an internal newsletter dated September 19, 2001, Wenig discussed the painful decision to comply and remove the flag, saying, “It was and is clear on reflection that the ideals of independence and objectivity go to the heart of what we are as a company. These pillars cannot be selectively retracted when we feel passion, or when we believe that right and wrong are so plainly clear. In fact, the trust principles are reinforced most powerfully when they are stretched and challenged the furthest.”
This was a remarkable demonstration of what it takes to protect ethical principles in a corporate world. The Trust doesn’t pose a burden of expense or bureaucracy on the corporation, but it does preclude prioritizing profits over everything else. The fact of Reuters’ longevity as a company is evidence that with a long-term view, the Trust Principles have served the institution extremely well. It is also a clear indication of the clarity of vision and flexibility of mind of the Trust founders, not dissimilar to that of the authors of the US Constitution—anticipating in the extreme long term the needs and obstacles of the company—creating a structure of preservation that is neither too specific nor too broad, but that will safeguard the principles without compromising the company’s ability to operate, expand, and adapt to the times.
For all its core ethos and latitude, the Trust is by no means immutable—human vigilance and foresight remain crucial to its safekeeping. In Michael Nelson’s memoir Castro and Stockmaster: A Life in Reuters, the company’s former general manager writes, “The Founders Share became vulnerable every time the protracted agenda over an EU Takeover Directive fired up again. The call for ‘one share one vote,’ if carried, could have wiped it out. We pressed
