Thomson Reuters joins R3 distributed ledger consortium

Thomson Reuters has joined financial innovation firm R3's partnership to design and apply distributed and shared ledger-inspired technologies to global financial markets.

Thomson Reuters will contribute insights from its work with customers to drive product innovation and transformation in the financial sector using distributed ledger technologies, said a statement.

Thomson Reuters has operated in more than 100 countries for more than 100 years, and brings a wide range of customer perspectives to R3's collaborative research. The R3 team of financial industry veterans, technologists and blockchain and cryptocurrency experts collaborate with consortium members on research, experimentation, design and engineering to help advance this technology to meet banking requirements for identity, privacy, security, scalability, interoperability and integration with legacy systems.

R3 recently unveiled Corda™, its shared ledger platform specifically designed to record, manage and synchronise financial agreements between regulated financial institutions. It is heavily inspired by and captures the benefits of blockchain systems, without the design choices that make blockchains inappropriate for many banking scenarios.

Mark Rodrigues, managing director, Strategic Customers & Solutions, Thomson Reuters, said: "Thomson Reuters has been collaborating with customers on blockchain and distributed ledger initiatives and powerful proof-of-concept projects for some time now.

"The opportunities afforded by this emerging technology are enormously exciting for us and for our customers, and our goal with R3 is to collaborate together with the consortium and our customers in these key industry discussions as we shape the future of financial transactions."

David Rutter, CEO, R3, said: "Our network of members continues to grow and diversify at a rapid rate, and the addition of a major market data and technology provider is another significant milestone for R3.

"Distributed and shared ledger-based solutions hold the potential to transform the technology used by financial market participants to execute trades and access market data, and Thomson Reuters' insight and expertise in this field will be an invaluable asset in our collaborative lab environment."