The London Stock Exchange Group has agreed to buy data provider Refinitiv for $27 billion, sealing a deal that will turn it into a global markets and information powerhouse to rival Michael Bloomberg’s financial data empire… By acquiring Refinitiv, which is best known for its Eikon desktop terminals, the LSE completes a multiyear effort to become less dependent on transaction-based revenues… The LSE said it would pay for the purchase by issuing $14.5 billion in new shares and would take on $12.5 billion of existing debt. It will also gain Refinitiv’s majority stake in the listed and fast-growing bond trading platform Tradeweb and outright ownership of currency trading platform FXall. The combined group will have annual revenues of more than £6 billion if the LSE can navigate a long antitrust process, which is expected to involve regulators in probing whether its cumulative data offerings would give it pricing power over customers… The all-share deal will turn Refinitiv’s owners, which include US private equity group Blackstone and Canada’s Thomson Reuters, into the LSE’s biggest shareholders. Together, they will own 37 per cent of shares and control just under 30 per cent of its voting rights. Shares in the LSE climbed 6.5 per cent in London trading yesterday.

Arash Massoudi