[ N E W S
R E V I E W ]
London Stock Exchange
at the centre of 2019’s
biggest acquisition drama
London Stock Exchange has found itself the subject of a mega bid from HKEX while
chasing its own deal for data giant, Refinitiv, in 2019’s biggest acquisition story.
S
hortly after markets opened
on 11 September, news broke
of Hong Kong Exchanges &
Clearing’s (HKEX) unsolicited
bid to acquire the London Stock
Exchange Group (LSEG). The
trading and investment community
globally was stunned by the bold
attempt to combine two of the
20 // TheTrade // Fall 2019
largest market infrastructures in
the world: HKEX offered £20.45
a share in cash and 2.495 newly
issued HKEX shares, valuing the
bid at £32 billion.
The deal would put London’s big-
gest stock exchanges fully under
HKEX ownership, after the Asian
bourse purchased the London Met-
al Exchange for £1.4 billion back
in 2012. It would also eclipse the
largest exchange mergers in histo-
ry, including Intercontinental Ex-
change’s purchase of the New York
Stock Exchange for $8.2 billion and
Chicago Board Options Exchange’s
(Cboe) acquisition of Bats Global
Markets for $3.4 billion.