London stock exchange keeps Refinitiv costs savings track

Investors are closely monitoring the integration of Refinitiv, which LSEG bought for $27 billion in 2021, after outages and concerns among some of them over the amount of money spent to mesh two different cultures and systems.

Shares in LSEG were up 2.5% by 0830 GMT.

LSEG’s Refinitiv purchase has transformed the 300-year-old London exchange into a group for which financial market data and analytics are larger than all its other business lines combined, pitting it against the likes of data leader Bloomberg and S&P Global (NYSE: SPGI).

The integration has involved internal personnel changes, including LSEG’s head of data, Andrea Remyn Stone, stepping down in June after only a year in the job, with her role temporarily taken over by Schwimmer.

INCOME GROWTH

LSEG reported a gross profit of 3.231 billion pounds, slightly above analysts’ consensus of 3.229 billion pounds. Adjusted basic earnings per share were 167.4 pence, above the 149.6 pence expected by analysts.

LSEG reported strong income growth across all divisions, with Pro-forma total income, excluding recoveries, up 6.2% on the same period last year.

Wealth Club said that the modernization of Refinitiv’s legacy technology would be a multi-year process.

Britain last month set out further reforms to attract more global investors to its capital market after being largely locked out of the European Union since Brexit.