London Stock Exchange sells Borsa Italiana to Euronext for £4bn

The London Stock Exchange Group will pocket nearly £4 billion after agreeing to sell Borsa Italiana in order to win approval for its takeover of Refinitiv.

The LSEG is selling Italy’s only stock exchange to Euronext for 4.3 billion euros (£3.9 billion), it revealed weeks after the two companies entered exclusive talks.

It hopes the deal will make regulators in Brussels more inclined to approve LSEG’s plans to take over the financial data company for 27 billion US dollars (£21 billion).

By agreeing to a sale now, bosses think they have got ahead of what the European Commission will require before it allows the Refinitiv deal to pass.

“We continue to make good progress on the highly attractive Refinitiv transaction and we are pleased to have reached this important milestone,” said London Stock Exchange chief executive David Schwimmer.

“We believe the sale of the Borsa Italiana group will contribute significantly to addressing the EU’s competition concerns.”

Borsa Italiana has been part of the London Stock Exchange Group since October 2007, when the two merged.

New owner Euronext already owns exchanges in London, Paris, Amsterdam and Dublin, among other places.

Last year Euronext bought Oslo Bors for 6.8 billion Norwegian krone (£570 million).

Mr Schwimmer said: “The Borsa Italiana group has played an important part in LSEG’s history.”

“We are confident that it will continue to develop successfully and contribute to the Italian economy and to European capital markets under Euronext’s ownership.”

The deal is subject to several conditions, including the completion of the Refinitiv deal.