MILAN, Jan 21 (Reuters) - European competition authorities
are expected to rule on the London Stock Exchange's $27 billion
takeover of data and analytics company Refinitiv "around the
summer", an LSE board member said on Tuesday.
LSE agreed in August to buy Refinitiv in a deal
aimed at offering trading across regions and currencies and
establishing the British company as a rival to Bloomberg,
triggering speculation about the possible sale of assets to gain
antitrust approval and to fund the deal.
"The Milan stock exchange is a strategic asset for LSE, it
is not up for sale at the moment", LSE director Raffaele
Jerusalmi, who is also the chief executive of Borsa Italiana,
said on the sideline of an event in Milan.
Jerusalmi said he did not see any issues in terms of overlap
between bond platforms MTS and Tradeweb, which are owned,
respectively, by LSE and Refinitiv.
The LSE-Refinitiv deal came just 10 months after a
consortium led by U.S. asset manager Blackstone completed
a leverage buyout of Refinitiv from Thomson Reuters.
(Reporting by Elisa Anzolin, writing by Gianluca Semeraro,
editing by Valentina Za)
