The London Stock exchange group.16 Nov 2023 12:35
Reasons for the so-called decline of the LSE when equities are no longer the stock in trade.
Extracts from the FT…
These days, the group that owns the 300-year-old exchange makes under 4 per cent of its revenues from listing and trading cash equities, a figure dwarfed by the data and analytics businesses it has acquired and developed since 2017, which now account for about two-thirds of its revenues.
Black cabs driving around London carry adverts showing the company’s logo alongside pictures of the Eiffel Tower and the Statue of Liberty. The video cites the 190 countries in which it operates. The rebranding is clearly intended to show that the London Stock Exchange Group is no longer particularly about London — or about trading stocks.
These days, the group that owns the 300-year-old exchange makes under 4 per cent of its revenues from listing and trading cash equities, a figure dwarfed by the data and analytics businesses it has acquired and developed since 2017, which now account for about two-thirds of its revenues.
“This is no longer a capital markets business in the same way that a Euronext or even a Deutsche Börse is,” says Tom Mills, analyst at Jefferies. “It’s significantly more skewed towards data.”
The $27bn acquisition of Refinitiv in 2019 in particular transformed it into one of the world’s biggest financial data groups. LSEG hopes that deal will entrench it in the plumbing that underpins global capital markets. A new partnership with Microsoft to develop a desktop analytics terminal to potentially rival Bloomberg shows LSEG managers are doubling down on this strategy.
The company has gone further than many of its rivals, but across the world stock exchanges are moving away from their traditional businesses and into areas including data, digital assets and mortgages. They believe such businesses will be more lucrative than the traditional work of listing and trading companies’ shares, and that investors will be prepared to value them more highly.
Sign In
Follow the stocks
