"Who owns Reuters" has two kinds of searchers: people who want the actual answer, and people who've seen a post claiming it's BlackRock, or worse. Let's serve both. * The actual answer: Reuters is the news division of Thomson Reuters, a Canadian-headquartered information company. Its controlling shareholder is The Woodbridge Company — the private investment vehicle of the Thomson family of Toronto — which holds roughly 70% of the shares. One family, one holding company, majority control. That's the whole mystery. * Now the rumor. Yes, BlackRock and Vanguard appear on the shareholder list — the way they appear on the shareholder list of essentially every large public company on Earth, because they run index funds that buy a sliver of everything. Their stakes sit in the low single digits with no control attached. If a low-single-digit index stake counted as "owning" a company, BlackRock would also own your favorite airline, your least favorite airline, and the company that makes Oreos. The claim is false; it's just what passive investing looks like from a distance. * The genuinely interesting part of Reuters ownership is older: the Trust Principles, adopted in 1941 while bombs were falling on London, committing Reuters to independence, integrity and freedom from bias. The first principle says Reuters shall never "pass into the hands of any one interest, group or faction" — and for decades a rule enforced it by capping any single owner at 15%. When the Thomson family bought the business in 2008, that cap was waived. What survived is the enforcement mechanism: the Reuters Founders Share Company holds a single golden "Founders Share" with special voting rights it can activate if any owner threatens editorial independence. A tripwire, not a fence. * One more thing that explains Reuters better than any conspiracy: news is the small part. Thomson Reuters makes most of its money selling legal, tax and compliance tools to professionals. The newswire is the famous bit, not the profitable bit — which, as media ownership goes, is about the healthiest arrangement on this list. Nobody's buying influence through a division that mostly sells subscriptions to law firms.