First Dow Jones, now Reuters. Financial media and information groups with a strong line in poison-pill defences may seem an odd choice of bid target. But Reuters, which on Friday said it had received an approach, could well be acquirable – assuming the bidder can get past the Reuters Founders Share Company, which could legally block an approach. Pehr Gyllenhammar, its chairman, has said in the past that he could imagine a bid being approved, provided the buyer honoured the guarantees of editorial integrity established at Reuters’ flotation in 1984.

The likely bidder, Canada’s Thomson, with a market capitalisation of £14bn, ticks the right boxes. The expected sale of its education unit for as much as £3bn would provide some of the cash needed to take on Reuters’ £8bn enterprise value. As Numis Securities suggests, it could even be possible to carve out Reuters’ media business, which accounts for only 7 per cent of revenues, in order to meet the trust’s conditions.