Tag: exchange

LSE Agrees To Sell Italian Stock Exchange To Euronext For $5.1 Billion In Deal Involving Many Players

Euronext, Europe’s largest stock exchange operator, will get even bigger after it agreed to purchase Borsa Italiana (the operator of the Milan Stock Exchange) from the London Stock Exchange, or LSE, for 4.3 billion euros ($5.1 billion).

The deal is complex and involves many stakeholders across the continent and U.K.

LSE entered into exclusive talks with Euronext last month on the deal after two other major European stock exchange operators — Germany’s Deutsche Boerse and Switzerland’s SIX — were muscled out of the picture.

LSE’s proposed disposition of Borsa Italiana is linked to its own plan to purchase data provider Refinitiv for $27 billion. LSE is still seeking regulatory approval from the EU for that transaction. (Refinitv is 55%-owned by Blackstone Group and 45%-owned by Thomson Reuters)

LSE’s acquisition of Refinitiv would transform LSE into a “capital markets infrastructure and information powerhouse, controlling widely-used services in share, bond and swaps trading as well as clearing, data and indices,” the Financial Times reported.

LSE put Borsa Italiana on the selling block after the European Commission’s competition watchdog raised concerns about LSE’s control over the European bond market.

LSE initially purchased Borsa Italiana in 2007 for 1.6 billion euros ($1.9 billion) – meaning it will make a huge profit on its sale to Euronext.

Upon gaining the Milan exchange, Euronext will operate exchanges with more than 1,800 listed companies and an aggregate market value of about 4.4 trillion euros ($5.2 trillion).

Borsa Italiana’s bond trading platform MTS will also allow Euronext to enter fixed income trading for the first time. MTS oversees the trading of Italy’s 2.1 trillion euro ($2.5 trillion) government bond market.

The deal will also sharply increase the amount of assets Euronext holds in custody on behalf of banks — from 2.2 trillion euros ($2.6 trillion) to 5.6 trillion

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The London Stock Exchange is selling Italy’s only stock market platform to Euronext for $5 billion



REUTERS/Toby Melville

© REUTERS/Toby Melville
REUTERS/Toby Melville
  • The London Stock Exchange agreed to sell Italy’s only stock market platform to Paris-headquartered Euronext for about $5 billion.
  • LSE said it opted to divest the Milan stock exchange to fulfill a condition for its acquisition of  data-provider Refinitiv, which is currently under review by the European Union’s executive arm.
  • The deal is politically sensitive, as the Italian government was debating whether to take back full control of Borsa Italiana earlier this year.
  • Euronext has partnered with Italy’s largest bank and state agency CDP to secure the Italian government’s backing.
  • Visit Business Insider’s homepage for more stories.

The London Stock Exchange agreed on Friday to sell Milan’s Borsa Italiana to pan-European stock operator Euronext for 4.3 billion euros ($5 billion).  

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The LSE said it began discussions with Paris-based Euronext last month and a share purchase agreement was signed on October 9.

The sale depends on LSE’s prospective $27 billion acquisition of data provider Refinitiv, the terms of which are under investigation by the European Commission. 

LSE said it opted to divest the Italian stock exchange to persuade the EU regulator to approve its takeover of Refinitiv.

“We believe the sale of the Borsa Italiana group will contribute significantly to addressing the EU’s competition concerns,” LSE CEO David Schwimmer said in a statement, adding that the exchange is making “good progress” on the Refinitiv deal.

The Refinitiv transaction is expected to be completed by early next year, while the Borsa Italiana deal is set to clear in the first half of 2021. 

Read more: Citi’s US equities chief warns of an ‘extreme peak’ in earnings revisions heading into the crucial reporting season — and explains why it makes stocks vulnerable to a pullback in the weeks ahead

Euronext, valued at about 7 billion

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Crypto exchange BitMEX overhauls management after U.S. criminal charges

HONG KONG, Oct 8 (Reuters) – Top executives at BitMEX, one of the world’s largest cryptocurrency derivatives exchanges, will step back from their roles, the company said on Thursday, a week after U.S. prosecutors filed criminal charges against them.

The company said last week it would “vigorously” fight the allegations after the U.S Department of Justice charged the exchange’s three founders, Arthur Hayes, Samuel Reed and Benjamin Delo with violating the federal Bank Secrecy Act. Gregory Dwyer, its first employee, was also charged.

Prosecutors said BitMEX had made itself a “vehicle” for money laundering and sanctions violations.

BitMEX said Hayes and Reed have “stepped back from all executive management responsibilities for their respective CEO and CTO roles with immediate effect,” adding they and Delo would not hold executive positions and that Dwyer would take a leave of absence from his role as head of business development.

Chief Operating Officer Vivien Khoo, will take over as chief executive. She previously held roles at Goldman Sachs and Hong Kong’s markets watchdog.

The statement said the management changes had been made with the “full approval” of the founders.

“These changes to our executive leadership mean we can focus on our core business of offering superior trading opportunities for all our clients,” David Wong, chairman of 100x Group, BitMEX’s parent, said in the statement.

Hayes and Delo did not immediately respond to requests for comment sent via their social media profiles and Reed could not be reached for comment. Dwyer’s lawyer, Sean Hecker, who earlier said his client would contest the charges, did not immediately respond to an emailed request for comment.

BitMEX is one of the world’s largest bitcoin futures trading platforms, popular for its high liquidity and compliance requirements that are seen as less onerous than those for futures venues regulated in

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Index Exchange Adds a CMO and a Chief Customer Officer to Its Ranks

Index Exchange is adding new positions to its C-suite, naming former Amazon executive Lori Goode as its CMO and former Criteo executive Jess Breslav as chief customer officer.

The supply-side platform is building out its leadership team as the industry faces a long road ahead, said CEO Andrew Casale, especially in adapting to the deprecation of third-party cookies and Apple’s IDFA, which make ad targeting much harder.

“We’ve got to pivot quite a few behaviors in the next, say, 15 months or less to be completely ready, but I think we’re going to get it done,” said Casale.

Breslav worked at Criteo, the publicly traded ad-tech company, for seven years, most recently serving as executive managing director, Americas.

“I am proud to join a team that has continued to show a strong and sustainable approach to driving growth, and I look forward to helping Index double down on that commitment,” Breslav said in a statement.

Index Exchange had previously managed its direct customers, publishers and media companies, and its indirect publishers on the buy-side separately. Now those two customer sets will be managed together under the CCO role, which will help handle the increase in deal activity on the exchange between publishers and big brands during the novel coronavirus pandemic.

“That kind of collaboration between our direct customer and our indirect customer has never been in higher demand. And so this will allow us to create a far more seamless experience end-to-end across the transaction,” Casale said.

Goode spent the past five years as head of marketing and training for Amazon Advertising. Prior to that, she spent two years at Facebook and more than six years at Microsoft.

“I could not be more excited to join a team so committed to driving business growth for publishers and marketers alike, and

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Tokyo Stock Exchange resumes after outage debacle, market steady

By Hideyuki Sano, Eimi Yamamitsu

TOKYO (Reuters) – The Tokyo Stock Exchange (TSE) resumed normal trading on Friday, with the main index holding steady a day after the worst-ever outage brought the world’s third-largest equity market to a standstill.

A man works at the Tokyo Stock Exchange after market opens in Tokyo, Japan October 2, 2020. REUTERS/Kim Kyung-Hoon

The glitch was the result of a hardware problem at the bourse’s “Arrowhead” trading system, and a subsequent failure to switch to a back-up. It caused the first full-day suspension since the exchange moved to all-electronic trading in 1999.

Market participants expressed some relief that the problem was hardware-related rather than a cyber attack, but cautioned about a potential longer-term impact given the hit to the Tokyo market’s reputation.

“For now, there’s relief that trade was able to resume,” said Masahiro Ichikawa, senior strategist at Sumitomo Mitsui DS Asset Management.

“The cause has not been clearly indicated yet, so traders are processing orders that couldn’t be done yesterday as they wait and see how the system works, rather than actively trading.”

The outage had come on a day of high anticipated trade volume following the release of the Bank of Japan’s closely watched tankan corporate survey and a rise on Wall Street.

The meltdown also occurred just two weeks into new Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga’s term – during which he has prioritised digitalisation – and undermined Tokyo’s hopes of replacing Hong Kong as an Asian financial hub.

“It’s problematic that this happened after the TSE upgraded its system as recently as 2019,” said Takatoshi Itoshima, strategist at Pictet Asset Management. “IoT (Internet of Things) related shares are meant to be the leader of ‘Suganomics’ trade but this won’t impress foreign investors.”

“TRULY REGRETTABLE”

Officials from the Tokyo Stock Exchange and Japan Exchange

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