(Reuters) - Thomson Reuters Corp's (>> Thomson Reuters Corp) origins date back to the 19th century, when Paul Julius Reuter started a business providing stock prices and news in London, while The Thomson Corporation was founded by newspaper publisher Roy Thomson in 1934 in Canada.

The current company resulted from the purchase by The Thomson Corporation of Reuters Group PLC in 2008.

Here are highlights in the history of the two companies:

2018 - Thomson Reuters agrees to sell a 55 percent stake in its Financial and Risk division, which provides real-time data on securities, currencies, commodities and news to the financial sector, into a joint venture with U.S. private equity firm Blackstone Group LP (>> Blackstone Group LP). The deal values the business at $20 billion including debt.

2008 - Thomson Corp and Reuters Group Plc merge into Thomson Reuters Corp, providing real time news and analytics to the financial sector, online legal and accounting information, and news to newspapers, television, radio and websites internationally.

1996 - Thomson sells all its UK holdings along with 43 daily newspapers in the United States and Canada and buys West Publishing, a U.S. provider of legal information.

1981 - Thomson sells The Times of London to Rupert Murdoch's News International Ltd (UK).

1973 - Reuters launches Reuter Monitor Money Rates Service, the first electronic marketplace for foreign exchange and money rates and later sets up Reuters Monitor Dealing Service for the trading of foreign exchange via video terminals.

1959 - Thomson expands into the UK with acquisition of The Sunday Times newspaper and later buys the Times of London.

1941 - Creation of the Reuter Trust Principles, an agreement with the UK Newspaper Publishers Association and the shareholders of Reuters that imposed obligations on Reuters to act with "integrity, independence and freedom from bias."

1932 - Roy Thomson, the son of a barber who left school at 14 to become a bookkeeper opens a radio station in Canada and later buys his first newspaper, The Timmins Press, in Canada.

1851 - Paul Julius Reuter, the son of a German rabbi who married the daughter of a German Lutheran pastor, moves to London and establishes a news wire agency and stock price service.

(Reporting by Leslie Adler)

Stocks treated in this article : Blackstone Group LP, Thomson Reuters Corp