London Stock Exchange Nears Microsoft Roll Out After Landmark Tie-up — Financial News

By Jeremy Chan

Of Financial News

The London Stock Exchange Group will shortly launch several new products after signing a landmark deal with Microsoft.

"Our partnership with Microsoft is approaching commercialization as the first product becomes more widely available by year-end," said David Schwimmer, chief executive of the London Stock Exchange Group Thursday.

The exchange said that several projects were entering external pilots and would be available more widely in the fourth quarter.

LSEG sealed a 10-year partnership with Microsoft in 2022, which also saw the tech giant take a 4% stake in the exchange.

Revenue for the exchange group in the first six months of 2024 was up 7.1% to just under 4.4 billion pounds ($5.66 billion), according to results released Thursday.

At LSEG's data and analytics division, where most of the Microsoft projects are taking place, revenue rose 4.3%

One product, called Open Directory, involves sharing data between LSEG's Workspace data terminal and Microsoft's messaging platform Teams. In the next wave of development, LSEG is looking to bring generative AI into Workspace.

The exchange's capital markets division was up 17.4%, mainly due to increased activity on fixed income and derivatives venue Tradeweb. Equities trading rose 3.9%.

A marquee listing such as fast-fashion firm Shein would be a major boost to the exchange business, which has been facing a listings dearth over the past two years.

The Financial Conduct Authority revamped listing rules in July to reinvigorate the market. The changes saw the FCA do away with the "premium" and "standard" listing classes, voting requirements for related party transactions, and relaxed rules around dual-class share structures and voting rights.

LSEG's clearing house, LCH, has partnered with BGC in the U.S. to help clear its upcoming interest rate futures contracts. BGC will launch FMX Futures Exchange next month, and has said its contracts will take advantage of LCH's dominance in clearing interest rate swaps, tapping into $225 billion of collateral held by LCH that could be cross-margined.

Revenue in clearing and post-trade at LCH remained flat in the first half of 2024 amid executive changes.

The group hired Pascal Boillat as its new chief operating officer, while Daniel Maguire, chief executive of LCH and head of post-trade at LSEG, was given an expanded role to also oversee the group's capital markets division after Murray Roos departed in April.

Financial News is owned by News Corp, the parent company of The Wall Street Journal and Dow Jones Newswires.

Write to Jeremy Chan at jeremy.chan1@dowjones.com

Website: www.fnlondon.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

August 01, 2024 05:15 ET (09:15 GMT)

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