Bloomberg and Thomson Financial, the electronic information providers, have stolen market share and revenues from arch-rival Reuters in the $6.92bn industry for real-time market data, according to annual figures on the sector.

An industry conference in New York heard that intense competition for real-time data accounting for about 60 per cent of Reuters' information business led to Bloomberg and Thomson increasing sales by 9.5 per cent and 30 per cent respectively last year, while Reuters was down 4 per cent.