Thomson Reuters is extending the reach of its messaging tool to 1,300 buyside institutions in the foreign exchange market in its latest attempt to break Bloomberg’s grip on communications within the financial community.

Eikon Messenger, which does not require a subscription to the group’s Eikon data terminals, is used by 190,000 individuals. The volume of messages has doubled in the past year to more than 10m messages a day, said David Craig, president of the group’s Financial and Risk division.

Eikon Messenger’s rollout to interdealer brokers, prime brokers, corporate treasurers and others using its FXAll foreign exchange trading platform, to be announced today, would help clients “reduce their reliance on one network”, Mr Craig said. “They have got one dominant provider and they want to have multiple providers in a more open market.”