London stock exchange buys big data harvester

The British stock exchange company London Stock Exchange (LSE) takes over financial service provider and data supplier Refinitiv from Blackstone and Thomson Reuters. The deal is fully settled in shares, with Refinitiv valued at $27 billion.

The merger creates one of the world’s largest providers of financial data and analysis tools. In addition to running the London stock exchange, LSE is already a supplier of stock exchange information, and the transaction also adds numerous other information systems.

The American investor Blackstone and news and data supplier Thomson Reuters together hold 37 percent of the shares of LSE. That interest includes voting rights of just under 30 percent. Blackstone bought a majority stake in Refinitiv last year, which was attributed a value of around 20 billion dollars. Former owner Thomson Reuters then held a 45 percent stake.