Alice Chambers |
Microsoft has partnered with London Stock Exchange Group (LSEG) to deliver analytics and modelling solutions via the Microsoft Cloud to help firms connect, research, analyse, collaborate and transact across the financial market value chain.
Microsoft’s analytics and modelling solutions include Microsoft Azure AI, Synapse and Power BI, all of which are hosted on the cloud. This technology will allow LSEG, which has recently acquired data services provider Refinitiv, to share data, analytics and insights with 40,000 financial institutions across 190 countries whilst meeting data privacy, security and compliance requirements.
The partnership also aims to alleviate the pressure that financial firms are facing to reinvent their business models and to ‘do more with less’. Microsoft will create an open all-in-one data, analytics and workflow solution by hosting the LSEG Workspace on Microsoft Teams, with access to the Microsoft 365 suite. One particularly useful feature will be the enhanced Excel integration, which will allow LSEG customers to create financial models, run data analytics and visualisations.
“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,” said David Schwimmer, CEO of London Stock Exchange Group. “Bringing together our leading data sets, analytics and global customer base with Microsoft’s comprehensive and trusted cloud services and global reach creates attractive revenue growth opportunities for both companies.”
The partnership intends to empower investment bankers, traders, wealth and asset managers, as well as risk, compliance, strategy and advisory managers.
“With this foundation, we will co-create an open, centralised, financial data platform enabling seamless data democratisation, collaboration and new monetisation opportunities across the financial services ecosystem,” said Judson Althoff in a recent Microsoft blog post. “This will unlock new offerings for customers to generate more sophisticated and timely insights.
“Microsoft estimates this partnership, and broader market opportunity, could generate an additional $5 billion in revenue for the company over the next 10 years, including the £2.8 billion ($3.4 billion) minimum spend commitments from LSEG for cloud services and support.”
Microsoft will also purchase an approximately four per cent equity stake in LSEG through the acquisition of shares from the Blackstone/Thomson Reuters Consortium.
“We are delighted to welcome Microsoft as a shareholder,” said Schwimmer. “We believe our partnership with Microsoft will transform the way our customers discover, analyse and trade securities around the world, and create substantial value over time. We look forward to delivering on that potential.”