The murmurs started late summer: if Reuters (NSDQ: RTRSY) is affected by credit crisis in Europe and the U.S., then Thomson’s (NYSE: TOC) already “pricey price” for Reuters might look more even more exorbitant now. WSJ does an analysis of the current thinking among analysts and other buyers of Reuters’ financial info services: “It’s terrific for Reuters shareholders, but what’s the benefit for Thomson?” says Felix Nahi, an analyst at Vancouver broker Odlum Brown.

Reuters’s main clients are investment banks and hedge funds and if layoffs hit that sector in the next year, as many expect, demand could weaken for Reuters terminals. Meanwhile, Thomson has long delivered steady profit growth, and only has a 30 percent of revenues come from financial markets.

But Thomson says it remains happy with the deal, which took 18 months to negotiate and said more investment-bank jobs cuts won’t have a big impact. Reuters also is better-positioned to weather any recession than last time, according to analysts, as it now offers more-sophisticated products such as algorithmic trading, which banks are less likely to cut, the story says.