Key Highlights
- Microsoft announced a 10-year strategic collaboration with the London Stock Exchange Group to put the infrastructure and data analytics of the financial market providers on the MS cloud.
- In the process, it has also acquired a 4% stake in the LSEG.
The deal between Microsoft and LSEG creates interoperability between LSEG’s Refinitiv Workspace data and analytics platform and Microsoft 365. Both the companies are planning to build a new financial data platform on Azure. The deal is more than just a multi-billion cloud services contract for Microsoft.
Microsoft has accepted to buy an approximately 4% equity stake in LSEG by acquiring shares from the Blackstone/ Thomson Reuters Consortium.
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Research Stats
According to Althoff’s post, the pact gives the second-largest player in the United States market for public cloud infrastructure access to Refinitiv, a subsidiary of LSEG. As a result, Refinitiv’s global reach has expanded to over 40,000 financial institutions in 190 countries.
As per Gartner, Refinitiv is the primary desktop competitor of Bloomberg in the financial markets insights space. On the other hand, Microsoft dominates the global market office productivity software suites, with just over an 85% share.
As per the Grand View Research analysis, integrating workspace with 365 solidifies Microsoft’s position in the financial services sector, where the cloud market is expected to reach over $100 billion by 2030.
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Competitors of Microsoft
The two largest competitors of Microsoft for CSP dominance have made inroads in the financial exchanges.
- AWS: According to Synergy Research Group, it commanded over one-third of the US market and confirmed a multiyear deal with Nasdaq to migrate its data last year.
- Alphabet: Its Google Cloud trails Microsoft’s 21% with an 11% US market share, signed a 10-year cloud agreement with derivatives marketplace CME Group in November 2021.
Althoff said that as a part of the Microsoft collaboration, LSEG would use Azure tools to create a consolidated financial data platform.
As per the press release, Microsoft has bought a 4% equity stake in LSEG, worth nearly $2 billion, in addition to providing cloud services.
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