The Italian stock exchange brings credit to the City, Lse buys 13% of Unicredit clearing

“We are under fire for our Italian activities. But those who recommend selling are contradicted by the numbers”. Thus Xavier Rolet, CEO of the London Stock Exchange, the day after the "sell" of Goldman Sachs motivated by doubts about the future profitability of the Italian "clearing house", the flagship brought by Piazza Affari at the time of the merger. On the contrary, the quarterly report approved yesterday shows that the greatest growth in revenues and profits (+20%) is precisely linked to the Italian activity of securities lending and other services offered by the clearing house, the anti-cyclical sector par excellence which guarantees profits also in down time. It is precisely thanks to the Italian Compensation and Guarantee Fund (CC&G) that the LSE has been able to face a very difficult moment for the markets without damage, underlined Rolet who, among other things, announced that he had bought another tranche of CC&G shares, equal to 13%, from Unicredit for 62 million euro.