Organic revenue growth is the best way to maximize the growth and free cash flow per share. As you have seen us do for the past four years, we will continue to pursue this objective in a fiscally disciplined and responsible manner, while at the same time, returning attractive levels of capital to our shareholders. Our strategy is clear and it has not changed since we announced it in fall of 2013. Our 2015 results clearly show that strategy is starting to bear fruit.

With that, let me turn it back over to Frank.

Frank Golden

Thanks very much, Jim and Stephane and that concludes our formal remarks. And now we would like to open the call for questions. So operator, if we could have the first question please.

Question-and-Answer Session

Operator

[Operator Instructions]. And our first question comes from Tim Casey with BMO. Please go ahead.

Q - Tim Casey

Thanks. Question for Stephane, could you talk a little bit about the progression of growth you’re expecting through the quarters this year, particularly in light of some of the macro trends you talked about, but also in terms of price increases which had been offset by some adjustments you had to make last year, just curious of how those will float through to ‘16?

A - Stephane Bello

Good morning and thanks for the question. Just to remind where we start from, we achieved organic growth of about 1.5% and our guidance for next year is for growth of 2% to 3% excluding recovery, so that would be a 50 to 150 basis point step-up on the growth performance we achieved this year. Now as you look at the progression of growth over the course of the year, there is a couple factors to keep in mind, one is exactly what you mentioned Tim is this commercial adjustments as we continue to make as we are migrating or legacy foreign exchange desktops to our new platform. The bulk of that impact is behind us, -- to report, it still got to have an impact through the first half of this year. So we expect to be largely complete with these commercial adjustments by the middle of this year and so that’s one reason why you should expect to see we’re all start to increase probably bit more dramatically in the second half than in the first half. The second factor is the recoveries that I mentioned earlier, and I mentioned this was about 100 million for the full year and again, this has no economic impact, no impact on EBITDA or free cash flow, but it will have an impact on our reported revenue growth. And that 100 million impact based on what we think is going to be weighted more heavily in the first half, only two-third of that will happen in the first half, one-third happening in the second half. And the final point I would note is what I mentioned for our legal business, I think we are facing a really tough year-on-year comparison in the first quarter, so Q1 would probably be a drop in terms of their growth performance this year and we should see an improvement from there. So all these factors combine to essentially explain why we would expect the growth acceleration to be more noticeable in the second part of the year not in the first part of the year.

Operator

Our next question comes from the line of Vince Valentini with TD Securities. Your line is open.

Q - Vince Valentini

Yeah, thanks very much. Hopefully a quick clarification and then a question, the 20 million of severance Stephane, is that mostly in the corporate line or is some of that allocated to one of the segments?

A - Stephane Bello

Yeah, that is the corporate line, they are related to the simplification program I mean to be very specific, this is related to the consolidation of our technology organization under one umbrella. And we did consolidate a technology operation we took the opportunity to streamline little bit the ranks of the technology organization and we took about 20 or somewhere between 20 million and 25 million and that was all taken at the corporate line level.

Q - Vince Valentini

Okay, thanks. And question is done, similar to Tim’s question little bit different, the price increases at F&R, could you give us some context on what you’ve been able to put through in January of this year exclusive of those commercial adjustments, I mean we’re starting to lap a couple of years here over the first icon installations mostly on the sell side, are you starting to see a better price contraction.

A - Stephane Bello

Yes, thank you, Vincent sorry for not answering the question fully in my prior answer. Yes, you now the model of our Financial and Risk business essentially is heavily subscription based and we have price increases that are pushed through at the beginning of every year, and I would say this year, we’ve seen the same price increases that we see in prior year so it’s usually in line with inflation and it’s something that happens automatically that we don’t really have to negotiate on a case by case basis with every of our customers.

Q - Vince Valentini

Thank you.

Operator

And we have a question from the line of Toni Kaplan with Morgan Stanley.

Unidentified Analyst

Good morning. This is actually Patrick Hoffmann in for Toni. I appreciate the color on F&R trends during your prepared remarks, but wanted to dive in a little bit deeper there. I’ve heard a lot about banks managing expenses, some are exiting full business lines, so firstly net sales are obviously negative and EMEA this quarter was wondering first if they turned more negative in the fourth quarter than they were in the third? And second if you were beginning to see signs of weakness in the United States as well? Thanks.

A - James Smith

No, it’s a great question, I’m glad you asked it and let me clarify. When we look at our fourth quarter, we were positive in the Americas and we were positive in Asia and we were just barely negative in Europe and it was actually an improved performance. So year-on-year improved performance from the prior year, so it wasn’t the kind of impact and as you know for the last several quarters, as we floated right around that positive line, one or two contracts can move you above or below the line particularly in Europe. But we did see actually an improved performance in Europe, not a declining performance in Europe in the fourth quarter.

Unidentified Analyst

And then, just as a follow on there, are you beginning to see any signs of weakness in the United States? You just mentioned that markets are really choppy and things in Europe seem pretty weak, are you starting to see any signs that’s kind of moving across the Atlantic?

A - James Smith

No, I think the markets are unsettled everywhere, and I think there’s a great deal of talk but the month of January is a very light month for us and frankly it’s not a month in which we would see something reflected in our numbers or trends. So it’s too early to see anything like that. I just would take the point of saying that when you think about and I know this may be a bit counterintuitive, but when you see the volatility in these markets, and when you think about our position, certainly uncertainty causes hesitancy to take action and CEOs and people who run major divisions may hesitate to act. But if you think about where we’ve made our investments over the last several years, they’ve been in areas that help our banks be more efficient where they help them to take out costs and where they help them to deal with regulatory complexity. And all of this activity actually makes that value proposition even stronger. So we haven’t seen that, we’ve seen in fact increased discussions with our customers about more things we might be able to do for them.

A - Stephane Bello

And Patrick, what I would add to that is refer you to the slide we discussed during the formal remarks showing that the dependence of our financial business on desktop revenues has decreased quite dramatically over the last 6-7 years, from about 55% to 40% of the revenue base, it’s still significant but it’s certainly not the majority anymore.

Unidentified Analyst

Great. Thanks, guys.

Operator

Our next question comes from Paul Steep with Scotia Capital.

Q - Paul Steep

Thanks. First one is a clarification for Stephane, can you talk on U.S. legal, print, the decline rate’s been about 100 basis points, is there any reason to think about an acceleration or change in those trends? And my bigger question would be for Jim, could you just recap for F&R, the major remaining platform initiatives that have to go along with the milestones or the timing over in the next two years? Thanks.

A - Stephane Bello

So Paul let me quickly address your first question, so U.S. Print revenues are declined by 6% to 7% a year so as you point they are becoming increasingly less important an impactful part of the business and we expect that trend to continue in 2016. So probably again 6% to 7% decline.

A - James Smith

Sure. And Paul if you look at the remaining large platform migrations that are likely to impact the numbers, they are two big ones really, and the first is the completion of the modern foreign exchange platform. We will, as Stephane mentioned, we will likely be through the majority of that economic impact in the first half of this year, the