Microsoft has announced that it has acquired a 4% stake in the London Stock Exchange Group. Under the partnership, Microsoft will help LSEG move over to Microsoft Azure and use other Microsoft Cloud offerings. New data and analytics services are expected to be developed, building on LSEG’s integration of Refinitiv, a provider of financial data.
“Advances in the cloud and AI will fundamentally transform how financial institutions research, interact, and transact across asset classes, and adapt to changing market conditions,” said Microsoft’s CEO Satya Nadella. “Our partnership will bring together the industry leadership of the London Stock Exchange Group with the trust and breadth of the Microsoft Cloud — spanning Azure, AI, and Teams — to build next-generation services that will empower our customers to generate business insights, automate complex and time-consuming processes, and ultimately, do more with less.”
For Microsoft, this development will see LSEG use more Microsoft products in its operations and Microsoft’s Executive Vice President of Cloud and AI Group, Scott Guthrie, will become a non-executive director of LSEG. For LSEG, it’s expected that it will increase revenue growth “meaningfully” over time as new products it develops with Microsoft come online.
Under the deal, LSEG has committed to spending $2.8 billion on Microsoft’s cloud-related products and services over the term of the partnership, which is expected to run for ten years.