Thomson Reuters to pull out of London listing

Thomson Reuters is to quit the London stockmarket, 144 years after its shares were first traded in the City.

The media conglomerate announced last night it would drop its London listing, having lost patience with its shares being valued less in the UK than across the Atlantic.

Once the plan is approved by shareholders, Thomson Reuters will be listed in Toronto and New York, and will also drop its Nasdaq listing. The company's current complex listing position is a result of the takeover of Reuters Group by Thomson Financial in 2008.

The Thomson Reuters chief executive, Tom Glocer, said the dual-listing structure was meant to help Reuters shareholders to continue investing in the company, but he revealed that UK shareholders now only make up 5% of the total. This is partly because the value of a Thomson Reuters share traded in London has been consistently less than one traded in New York.

Last summer, the discount between the two hit 20% – Glocer claimed American investors had a better understanding of his company than those in the City of London.

Losing the London listing will cut the company's costs. Its shares rose by more than 5% this morning to £17.19.

Reuters was founded by Paul Julius Reuter who started sending news between European cities, famously using carrier pigeons in the early days. In 1851, he set up an office in two rooms at 1 Royal Exchange Buildings in London's financial centre and used one of the first telegraph cables between England and France to transmit stock market prices between London and Paris.

Reuter's Telegram Company, as it was then known, was registered as a public limited company in 1865. It was taken private again in 1916, before floating on the London Stock Exchange and the Nasdaq in 1984.