Privately-held Zawya provides data products specially geared toward Middle Eastern language and financial systems. Thomson Reuters stated that buying Zawya brings inroads to local financial markets and data, particularly with its recognized regional database and with non-listed firms involved in business processes in the Middle East and North Africa.
Russell Haworth, managing director for the Middle East and North Africa for Thomson Reuters, said in a statement on the deal that his firm would back Zawya’s offerings with added capabilities for transparency analytics.
Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. Earlier in June, Thomson Reuters announced the buy of legal translation provider Lexgulf, based in United Arab Emirates. Ovum Research estimated an approximately 7.7 percent growth in information management systems spending in 2012 for the Middle East and all of Africa, on par with much of Europe.
In April, Thomson Reuters sold off its health care data management line to Veritas for $1.25 billion and stated it would turn around those proceeds to investment and transactions in its other cores of financial services, science, media and legal business intelligence.
Justin Kern is senior editor at Information Management and can be reached at justin.kern@sourcemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter at @IMJustinKern.
