Microsoft buys near 4% stake in London Stock Exchange Group as part of 10-year cloud deal

LONDON — U.S. tech giant Microsoft on Monday announced a 10-year partnership with the London Stock Exchange Group and took a near 4% stake in the U.K. bourse operator.

The partnership involves next-generation data and analytics, as well as cloud computing products, according to a statement by the LSEG. It includes a new data infrastructure for the London exchange and analytics and modelling solutions with Microsoft Azure, AI, and Microsoft Teams.

LSEG’s shares were up 4% in Europe on Monday.

“This strategic partnership is a significant milestone on LSEG’s journey towards becoming the leading global financial markets infrastructure and data business, and will transform the experience for our customers,” David Schwimmer, CEO of LSEG, said in the statement.

Microsoft will purchase an approximately 4% stake in the U.K. firm from the Blackstone/Thomson Reuters Consortium.

The deal will see various Microsoft products used across different parts of LSEG’s business. Microsoft will migrate the bourse’s data platform and other key tech infrastructure into its cloud built on Azure, the U.S. giant’s large public cloud product.

LSEG has a contractual agreement over the 10-year period to spend a minimum of $2.8 billion on cloud-related products with Microsoft.

The stocks exchange said this is “consistent with existing long-term” spending plans.

Microsoft and LSEG will also work together in developing new professional collaboration tools. LSEG has developed a product called Workspace, a data and analytics platform. The two companies will be working on advancing this product and integrating it with Microsoft Teams, the firm’s messaging app.

The release also said that Scott Guthrie, Microsoft’s executive vice president for the Cloud and AI Group, will be appointed as a non-executive director of LSEG.

Satya Nadella, the chairman and CEO of Microsoft, said: “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.”

The London Stock Exchange agreed to buy financial information firm Refinitiv back in 2019 in a deal that was valued at $27 billion.