The Notebook: LSEG’s data business success calls LSE into focus
Where the City’s movers and shakers have their say. Today, it’s Morning Wire’s own editor Andy Silvester with the pen.
It would be churlish to complain about David Schwimmer’s reported pay bump. After all, since he took the reins of the London Stock Exchange Group in 2018, the firm has shown significantly improved performance on just about every metric, successfully integrating Refinitiv and signing a deal with Microsoft to enhance its data offering.
As a paper we’ve been just about alone on Fleet Street in advocating for higher pay for successful chief executives, so we can hardly baulk at Schwimmer reportedly taking home a bigger cheque.
However the relative success of LSEG’s data business only calls into sharper focus the travails of the London Stock Exchange itself, now just a subsidiary of the wider LSEG, whose boss – Julia Hoggett – does not even report into Schwimmer himself but to the group’s head of capital markets Murray Roos.
Does LSEG – whose revenues from the equity exchange are around 4 per cent of the total – have enough interest in reviving the falling-liquidity, ever-shrinking stock market? It’s a fair question, and I’ve heard more than one whisper in recent weeks that the time is approaching when LSEG might be better off spinning off the exchange and rebranding the parent company into something more data-y. Would Schwimmer do such a thing?
Would it make any difference to London equity market’s more structural problems? Both, for now, are unknowable, though Schwimmer has been passionate in his defence of the equity market – famously blaming the media for pointing out the exchange’s problems.
That there is even chatter at City lunches about the possibility is a sign, though, that something may well have to give.
Major news beaten by glorified gladiator adverts
A brief pop on to the BBC website at the weekend delivered the usual sense of disappointment. The collective top stories on the home of the public broadcaster were a glorified ad for its Saturday night entertainment (“Mayhem as rule-breaking Gladiators incur wrath of the ref”), an exclusive interview with a former Radio One DJ and two light-as-a-feather healthcare stories about blood and bones. Not as if there’s anything else going on in the world…
Bankers might not care for the City, but the foodies do
One of London’s greatest competitive advantages remains the fact that it is, in fact, London. The much-discussed exodus of bankers to Frankfurt post-Brexit, for instance, was a theory only pushed by those who had never been to Frankfurt. Living here is like winning the lottery of life, and one such reason is its restaurants: so, in no particular order, some recent delights: the pork belly doughnuts at Cafe Kitty in Soho, the fried Brussels sprouts with miso at Ombra in Hackney, and the absurdly good value falafel wrap at All That Falafel in London Bridge. Don’t say we don’t look after you here at Morning Wire towers.
Rugby’s raw physicality
Amid much chatter about rugby union’s future, I was struck by the conclusions of Courtney Lawes, the former England captain. Effectively, Lawes said, we should embrace the raw physicality of rugby, rather than apologise for it. In the rough and tumble of the game is the sport’s very essence. Now, this may not be the conclusion of the authorities looking at a class action lawsuit, but I found it a refreshing – and convincing – argument.
The hidden scandals
Speaking of the BBC, one wonders if it is next in the crosshairs of the nation’s drama screenwriters. After the public anger generated by Mr Bates vs the Post Office, one might suggest some other scandals: the loan charge, the ongoing HBOS Reading inquiry (just a few years late, that one) or perhaps the woman with Down’s Syndrome prosecuted behind-closed-doors for not paying her TV licence.