London Stock Exchange gets US approval for Refinitiv deal
US regulators have approved the London Stock Exchange’s (LSE) takeover of financial data firm Refinitiv, the bourse said today.
LSE said that the US Committee on Foreign Investment had determined that there were no national security concerns related to the $27bn (£22bn) deal, which was first announced in August last year.
The all-share deal would triple LSE’s revenues to £7bn, as well as creating new income streams for the company from data distribution and analytics.
In November, LSE shareholders overwhelmingly backed the purchase of Refinitiv from a consortium led by private equity giant Blackstone.
In today’s update to the stock exchange, LSE said it remained committed to closing the deal in the second half of 2020, despite the European Commission last week encouraging companies to delay merger filings.
The group said it “continues to make progress in relation to the remaining antitrust and regulatory clearances” that the deal is conditional on, and was continuing to engage with the Commission and other regulators to “ensure that all filings and approvals proceed as efficiently as possible”.
It was reported last month that the LSE was yet to officially notify EU competition regulators of the deal, but that the tie-up had already come under intense scrutiny in Brussels, raising the prospect that it would be subject to a much longer investigation than had been expected.