Data and their management are fueling the new gold rush in various fields, including in the financial one. Google, Amazon, Apple are doing it. The hand now passes to the US software giant Microsoft who announced the4% purchase di London Stock Exchange Group (LSEG), the group that controls the London Stock Exchange , Refinitiv platform.
The IT giant founded by Bill Gates has acquired the stake from Blackstone-Thomson Reuters, the company's largest shareholder with 22%. Before the announcement, participation was worth about 2 billion, but its value has already grown significantly. At the moment, in fact, the title Lseg trat up by more than 4%, for a capitalization close to 45 billion.
According to the agreement, LSEG assumes the contractual commitment with Microsoft to purchase services worth at least $2,8 billion over the course of the duration of ten years of the partnership to facilitate the migration of the exchange operator's data platform to the cloud. “This strategic partnership is one milestone significant in LSEG's drive to become a global leader in financial markets infrastructure and data business, and will transform our clients' experience,” he commented. David Schwimmer, CEO of the London Stock Exchange in the note. “We believe our partnership with Microsoft will transform the way our clients discover, analyze and trade securities around the world.” The purchase by Microsoft is expected to be completed in first quarter of 2023 and the two big techs are committed to don't sell shares for at least one year.
London Stock Exchange: new step in technological change
The transaction represents a further piece of a larger puzzle concerning the technological transformation of Lseg which goes beyond the traditional stock exchanges and which includes on the one hand the acquisition of Refinitiv, financial data provider and trading platform operator in 2021 and on the other the sale for 4,32 billion euro Borsa Italiana at Euronext nin October 2020.
Now the London Stock Exchange will transfer its infrastructure and its services to the Microsoft cloud, weblog Azure. The London Stock Exchange will also use Microsoft Teams for communications elartificial intelligence (AI) of big tech to improve and deepen the analysis of financial data.
“Initially the focus will be on building interoperability between LSEG Workspace and Microsoft Teams, Excel and PowerPoint with other Microsoft applications and a new version of LSEG Workspace,” explained the US company. In the longer term, explains a note, «Lseg and Microsoft have agreed to explore the development of a digital market infrastructure based on cloud technology, with the aim of revolutionizing the methods of interaction between financial players and the capital market ».
LSEG had purchased Refinitiv for $27 billion from the consortium of Blackstone and Thomson Reuters, making "good progress" in its cloud-based data platform delivery program, the statement said. Thomson Reuters, which owns Reuters News, holds a minority stake in LSEG following the Refinitiv deal.
“Advances in the cloud and artificial intelligence will radically transform the way financial institutions research, interact and transact across asset classes and adapt to changing market conditions,” he stressed Satya Nadella, CEO and president of Microsoft. “Our partnership will combine the London Stock Exchange Group's industry leadership with the trust and breadth of Microsoft Cloud, including Azure, AI and Teams, to create next-generation services that will enable our clients to generate insights, automate complex and time-consuming processes and ultimately do more with less.”
The possession and management of data is tempting for many
Microsoft isn't the only one that has sensed the business in financial data management. Google is exploring data delivery and analytics across Google Finance and in the payments sector it is active with con Google Pay. Apple Lossless Audio CODEC (ALAC), is exploring the credit sector and, after launching the Buy Now Pay Later, recently announced the US offering of a savings account in partnership with Goldman Sachs. Amazonfinally, has recently launched an insurance policy comparison service in the United Kingdom.
