Knowing there is little chance to charge for straight business news, having become a commodity, Thomson Reuters (TSE:TRI) made a move into the financial commentary business by making an offer for Web financial news commentary site Breakingviews. The acquisition price offered is reportedly for about $18 million.

Being a strong brand, Thomson Reuters will keep the business operating under the Breakingviews name, while merging it with their own existing business commentators from Reuters, and will be headed by Breakingviews co-founder Hugo Dixon.

“We expect the combined talent and editorial strength of the enlarged team to enable us to become the world’s premier financial commentary service,” said Reuters editor-in-chief David Schlesinger.

While the deal has to be accepted by Breakingviews shareholders, all the directors from the company have unanimously recommended the offer be accepted. Assuming that happens, the deal will close in about two months.

Some in the media like Rupert Murdoch has said they’re looking to create fee-based models for their online media businesses, but if it’s solely a news service, no matter the sector it reports on, it’s highly doubtful that will ever happen. Rather, online commentary businesses like Breakingviews.com have no problem charging fees for their service, as they already are, and business and financial commentary is becoming a battleground as it’s one of the more promising sectors people will pay a price to access, which has already been proven.

Once the deal is completely, the two companies said the financial commentary service will be available to existing clients of Thomson Reuters premium desktop service.

Breakingviews.com isn’t only an online business commentary firm, it also syndicates its content to a number of top newspapers around the world. Thomson Reuters is looking to add to that syndication in a much larger capacity.

This continues to be part of Reuters’ strategy to become a major player in the global financial and business commentary sector.