By David Schwimmer, Chief Executive Officer, LSEG
It’s interesting to imagine what the patrons of Jonathan’s Coffee House would have made of it all. More than 300 years after that one-time City establishment was used to post the prices of stocks and commodities, the company it grew into has today become one of the world’s leading financial markets infrastructure and data providers.
The creation of a new LSEG through the combination of London Stock Exchange Group (LSEG) and Refinitiv is historic in its own way and a great achievement for our people.
When the idea of the transaction first emerged, we could never have dreamt we would have to attempt something of this scale in the midst of a global pandemic. Yet we persevered and got there.
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LSEG and Refinitiv have long provided important services and products to the market: the data and analytics used every day to make important decisions; the tools to fight financial crime; the execution venues used to access liquidity, raise capital and discover pricing; the clearing houses used to manage risk and capital.
And now as a combined organisation, that commitment to the markets, and an awareness of the trust the financial system places in us, are as strong as ever.
Today that sense of profound responsibility is coupled with a new excitement about the progress this combined organisation can make in driving financial stability, empowering economies and enabling customers to create sustainable growth – the whole reason LSEG exists.
At no time in its long history has London Stock Exchange Group been able to offer the range of capabilities it can today – from pre-trade and price discovery right through to clearing. We have extended our global reach. Customers have access to significantly enhanced datasets. And we have added new execution venues in the two largest traded asset classes: foreign exchange and fixed income.
LSEG is important to the successful functioning of the markets and the growth of our customers’ businesses: we are the venue on which issuers worth a combined £5 trillion are bought and sold; where $400 billion of foreign exchange transactions flow daily; where 400,000 professionals use our data and analytics drawn from 150,000 sources; and where nearly 1,000 financial institutions manage their post trade risk.
We believe this is a set of capabilities that will help our customers navigate what is an unusually uncertain and challenging time. The impact of the pandemic has only intensified and accelerated social, technological, political and environmental changes with which businesses and society were already grappling. If ever there was a time when customers needed a partner to work with – to meet those challenges, and to help them create opportunities, innovate and grow sustainably – it is now.
With vaccines, a growing global effort to address the climate challenge and the revival of truth and rule of law in the torchbearer of democracy, we can look forward with some optimism. However, the challenges ahead, particularly for a broad-based economic recovery, are significant.
LSEG will play its part in this recovery by working in a spirit of openness and partnership with you. We believe being open is more than a description of the access we give customers. It is a philosophy running through both groups’ long heritage and even more so today: because open makes more possible.
Source: LSEG
