Reuters' move to trim its 43% holding in Tibco follows pressure from management at the US-based information management company, says the FT.

Similar reports surfaced earlier this year after Tibco CEO Vivek Ranadive cautioned that Reuters' investment in the firm was hitting Tibco's share price and liquidity.

"I would be more comfortable if Reuters reduced its stake to 20-30 percent," Ranadive was quoted as saying in February.

Reuters and Tibco have both declined to comment on the latest market whispers.

In a seperate development, Merrill Lynch has installed and gone live with Reuters new automated foreign exchange (FX) dealing platform, Reuters Electronic Trading - Automated Dealing (RET-AD). Merrill is the first bank to go live on the portal product, which REuters acquired when it bought AVT Technologies Ltd.

The US investment bank is using the system to provide customers with automated FX prices and trading capability, through either a multi-bank portal such as FXall or Currenex, or through Merrill's single dealer institutional portal MLX. Merrill Lynch has also licensed the RET-AD trading technology, or application programme interface (API), enabling its retail brokerage network to conduct FX trades and interface electronically with clients using existing internal bank systems.

Reuters' CEO Tom Glocer says the deal is valued at some $3-$4 million annually.

He adds that the news and information group is also set to announce an agreement with Deutsche Bank for the installation of its Multex research product and another deal to supply 5000 Reuters Plus systems to an unnamed client.