London Stock Exchange Group plc
Annual Report 2024
Make more possible
To read about how we ‘make more possible’,
please see the customer case studies on
the following pages:
Making more possible with... Dow Jones
Page 16
Making more possible with... Barclays
Page 22
Making more possible with... ICD
Page 30
Making more possible with... Microsoft
Page 40
London Stock Exchange Group plc
10 Paternoster Square
London EC4M 7LS
Telephone: +44 (0)20 7797 1000
Registered in England and Wales
No. 5369106
Further information on
London Stock Exchange Group
can be found at: www.lseg.com.
01 London Stock Exchange Group plc
Annual Report 2024
Strategic Report
Our purpose
Driving financial stability, empowering
economies and enabling customers to
create sustainable growth.
The services we provide as a leading global
financial markets infrastructure and data
provider are critical for economies around the
world. The vital social and economic role we
play enables sustainable growth for customers,
partners and the communities we all live in.
Strategic Report
Approval of the Strategic Report is provided in the
Directors’ report on page 148.
LSEG at a glance 02
Our business model 04
Market trends and our response 06
Chair’s statement 08
Chief Executive Officer’s statement 10
Executive management team 12
A compelling investment story 14
Making more possible with Dow Jones 16
Key performance indicators 18
Making more possible with Barclays 22
Our purpose and strategy 24
Making more possible with ICD 30
Divisional review: Data & Analytics 32
Divisional review: FTSE Russell 34
Divisional review: Risk Intelligence 35
Divisional review: Capital Markets 36
Divisional review: Post Trade 38
Making more possible with Microsoft 40
Chief Financial Officer review 42
Financial review 44
Sustainability 56
Board engagement with stakeholders 73
Section 172(1) statement 78
Principal risks and uncertainties 81
Financial viability statement 91
Governance
Corporate governance introduction 94
Board of Directors 96
Corporate Governance Report 100
Complying with the provisions of the Code 109
Report of the Nomination Committee 110
Report of the Audit Committee 114
Report of the Risk Committee 120
Directors’ Remuneration Report 122
Directors’ Report 148
Statement of Directors’ responsibilities 153
Financial Statements
Independent Auditor’s report 156
Consolidated income statement 164
Consolidated statement of comprehensive income 165
Consolidated balance sheet 166
Consolidated statement of changes in equity 167
Consolidated cash flow statement 168
Notes to the consolidated financial statements 169
Company balance sheet 238
Company statement of changes in equity 239
Notes to the Company financial statements 240
Shareholder Information
Glossary 252
Investor relations 255
Who we are
Contents
London Stock Exchange Group plc
Annual Report 2024
02
LSEG at a glance
Our business
What we do
With capabilities in data, indices and analytics, capital formation, trade execution, clearing
and risk management, we operate at the heart of the world’s financial ecosystem and enable
the sustainable growth and stability of our customers and their communities.
Our purpose and values
Our strategy
We drive financial stability by operating
businesses that are of systemic importance,
fundamental to the financial ecosystem and
serving our customers’ critical needs.
We empower economies by helping
our customers to raise capital, support
employment, innovate and access global
financial networks, across multiple
asset classes.
We enable customers to create sustainable
growth by providing the tools and data that
enable financial markets to manage risk and
make informed investment decisions.
At LSEG, our values are Integrity, Partnership,
Excellence and Change. Underpinning our
purpose, our values articulate how we work
with customers, partners and each other.
For more detail on our purpose –
refer to page 24; and on our values –
refer to page 59.
We are a global, multi-asset class financial
markets infrastructure (FMI) and data provider,
serving our customers across the trade
lifecycle. A number of aspects of our business
are strategically differentiating:
— We are trusted to deliver services meeting
business-critical needs.
— We build and maintain deep partnerships
with our customers.
— We support an open ecosystem.
— We offer integrated solutions.
— We operate a best-in-class data machine
and distribution.
For more detail on our strategy –
refer to pages 25 to 29.
Together, our five business divisions – Data &
Analytics, FTSE Russell, Risk Intelligence,
Capital Markets and Post Trade – offer
customers seamless access to global financial
markets, across the trading lifecycle.
Data & Analytics
Open platform with high-value data and
analytics, providing information, insights and
workflow to enable customers to execute
critical investing, trading and risk decisions.
FTSE Russell
Benchmarks, indices and data solutions with
multi-asset capabilities. Our indices help inform
asset allocation, support portfolio construction
and enable risk and performance analysis.
Risk Intelligence
Suite of solutions to help organisations
efficiently navigate risks, avoid reputational
damage, reduce fraud and ensure legal and
regulatory compliance around the globe.
Capital Markets
Venues and infrastructure to raise or transfer
capital through the issuance and secondary
markets trading for equities, fixed income
and foreign exchange.
Post Trade
Clearing, risk management, capital optimisation
and regulatory reporting solutions to help
clients manage scarce resources, mitigate
risks and navigate regulation.
For more detail on our divisions –
refer to pages 32 to 39.
How we performed
LSEG at a glance continued
Financial
highlights
Total income growth
including recoveries
2
+5.7%
2023: +8.2%
EBITDA
£3,945m
2023: £3,514m
Operating profit
£1,463m
2023: £1,371m
Basic earnings per share
128.8p
2023: 138.9p
Dividends per share
130.0p
2023: 115.0p
Adjusted financial
highlights
1,3
Total income growth excluding recoveries
2
(organic, constant currency basis)
+7.7%
2023: +7.1%
Adjusted EBITDA margin
48.8%
2023: 47.2%
Adjusted operating profit
£3,165m
2023: £2,862m
Adjusted earnings per share
363.5p
2023: 323.9p
Our financial performance in the year,
including the above metrics, are discussed
in more detail in our Financial review
on pages 44 to 55.
Sustainability
highlights
Female representation at
senior leadership
41%
2023: 42%
Sustainable issuers
235
2023: 236
Reduction in carbon emissions
4
-54%
2023: -34%
5
For a full list of our key performance
indicators – refer to pages 18 to 21.
Strategic Report
03 London Stock Exchange Group plc
Annual Report 2024
1 Continuing operations.
2 Recoveries relate to fees for third-party content, such as exchange data, that is distributed directly to customers.
They represent low margin pass-through revenues and are offset in cost of sales. We exclude recoveries in our
performance commentary when trying to convey the best sense of underlying business performance.
3 Adjusted figures exclude the impact of any non-underlying items. For more information on the criteria that constitute
non-underlying items, refer to page 175.
4 Reduction of Scope 1, Scope 2 (market), Scope 3 (selected – business travel, home working, commuting,
fuel- and energy-related (FERA)) emissions vs a 2019 baseline.
5 Our 2023 emissions figure has been retrospectively revised to reflect corrections for historical errors in calculation.
London Stock Exchange Group plc
Annual Report 2024
04
Our business model
We are a leading provider of
financial markets infrastructure
and data. We bring deep
expertise across the financial
markets value chain.
We are a leading partner
to the financial services sector
and have a sizeable and
growing footprint across
corporate communities.
Our five divisions provide
products and services that
span the trade lifecycle...
…with offerings that span
multiple asset classes,
and cash and derivatives.
We are a dedicated partner
to our customers globally…
…and are developing our
channels to serve customers
better and broaden our reach.
Post-trade and
capital optimisation
Trade lifecycle
Serving customers pre-trade, at trade and post-trade
1 Excluding Russian banks.
2 Exchange-traded fund assets under management.
3 Europe, the Middle East and Africa.
4 Asia-Pacific.
5 Total income excluding recoveries.
Ecommerce
Self-service
model
High-touch
Dedicated
in-market
coverage
Partners
Sales and
support through
partner network
Low-touch
Central hub
service model
Microsoft
10-year strategic
partnership
EMEA
3
43% Group income
5
Americas
42% Group income
5
APAC
4
15% Group income
5
Foreign
exchange (FX)
Equities Commodities
and alternatives
Fixed income Multi-asset
class
Risk
Intelligence
Key products:
— World-Check
Data &
Analytics
Key products:
— Workspace
— Real-time data
Capital Markets
Key products:
— London Stock
Exchange (LSE)
— Tradeweb
— FXall
FTSE
Russell
Key products:
— FTSE Series
— Russell Series
Post
Trade
Key products:
— SwapClear
— Post Trade
Solutions
Investment
banks and sales
and trading
Wealth
management
Retail and
commercial
banks
Buy-side
institutions
Corporates
and other
Customers served
>44,000
Customers in the Top 100
global banks
1
100
Customers in the Top 50
largest corporates
48
Our real-time data covers
100m instruments
2024 FTSE Russell ETF AUM
2
$1.4tn
SwapClear client trades in 2024
4.0m
Locations globally
>60
Employees globally
>26,000
Countries we provide services in
>170
Workspace users
>300,000
Ecommerce launched
2024
Partners
>1,700
Equity capital raised in 2024
£25bn
2024 FX total average daily
volume (ADV)
$479bn
Trades on Tradeweb
since launch
>$3.0 quadrillion
Trade
execution
Capital formation
and issuance
Pre-trade and
liquidity discovery
05 London Stock Exchange Group plc
Annual Report 2024
Strategic Report
Our business model continued
Our business divisions
In 2024, we revised our reporting structure to better reflect our business.
Data & Analytics FTSE Russell Risk Intelligence Capital Markets Post Trade
Income
1
£4.0bn
Income
£0.9bn
Income
£0.5bn
Income
£1.8bn
Income
£1.2bn
Share of Group income
1
47%
Share of Group income
1
11%
Share of Group income
1
6%
Share of Group income
1
22%
Share of Group income
1
14%
What we do
High-value financial
markets data, workflows
and analytics.
What we do
Benchmarks, indices,
analytics and
data solutions.
What we do
Solutions to protect
against fraud and
financial crime.
What we do
Capital raising and
trading venues in
multiple asset classes.
What we do
Clearing, risk management
and capital optimisation
solutions.
Revenue model
— Mix of enterprise-wide
and product-level
agreements
— 1–2-year typical
contract length
— Annual price reviews
(for most subscription
products), usually
on 1 January
Revenue model
— Mix of subscription-
based (licence fees)
and asset-based
(proportional to
AUM) revenues
— 3-year typical contract
length for data
subscription business
— Price reviews
on renewal
Revenue model
— Mix of enterprise-wide
and product-level
agreements
— 1–2-year typical
contract length
— Annual price reviews,
usually on 1 January
Revenue model
— Recurring revenue
largely driven by
Tradeweb access
fees and LSE annual
listing fees
— Transactional revenue
driven by trading fees
for Tradeweb, LSE,
Turquoise
and FXall/Matching
Revenue model
— Most members pay
annual clearing fees
(based on volume tiers).
Clients (non-members)
pay fees per transaction
— We charge handling
fees on non-cash
collateral and secure
cash in short-term,
ultra-low-risk instruments
Main areas of
cost/investment
— Data
— Workspace capability
enhancements
— Infrastructure
modernisation
Main areas of
cost/investment
— Technology and
platform transformation
Main areas of
cost/investment
— Screening data
— Global account
verification
Main areas of
cost/investment
— Increasing resiliency
— Product development
— New business initiatives
(e.g., Digital Market
Infrastructure)
Main areas of
cost/investment
— Regulatory and
resiliency spend
— Post Trade Solutions
— Product development
— New business initiatives
(eg DigitalAssetClear)
— People cost — People cost — People cost — People cost — People cost
Key customer types
3
— Buy-side institutions
— Investment banks and
sales and trading
Key customer types
3
— Buy-side institutions
— Wealth management
Key customer types
3
— Corporates and others
— Retail and
commercial banks
Key customer types
3
— Corporates and others
— Investment banks and
sales and trading
Key customer types
3
— Investment banks and
sales and trading
— Buy-side institutions
Other market
participants include:
— Bloomberg
— S&P Global
— FactSet
Other market
participants include:
— S&P Global
— MSCI
Other market
participants include:
— RELX
— Dow Jones
— Moody’s
Other market
participants include:
— MarketAxess
— CBOE Global Markets
— Euronext
Other market
participants include:
— CME Clearing
— Eurex Clearing
— OSTTRA
1 Income excluding recoveries.
2 Recurring revenue as a proportion of Post Trade income including Net Treasury Income.
3 Key focus for division – not exhaustive. Our divisions hold relationships with a range of customer types.
Recurring
revenue 98%
Recurring
revenue 77%
Recurring
revenue 28%
Recurring
revenue 36%
2
Recurring
revenue 100%
London Stock Exchange Group plc
Annual Report 2024
06
Market trends
and our response
Demand for data and its integration
into workflows
Rise of new technologies
including AI
Growth in global demand for high-quality, precision time-stamped
and differentiated datasets from flexible, reliable and traceable data,
with a choice of on-premises and cloud service delivery.
What is LSEG’s response?
We continue to invest in our real-time and pricing offerings to add more
latency options and deliver data how customers want it, while embracing
automation to improve the quality and breadth of our data. We are enhancing
our proposition as the number one real-time data provider by offering more
choice in public and private cloud, and managed on-premises solutions.
Example of this in action in Data & Analytics
This year, we launched DataScope Warehouse, providing cloud-based
access to our cross-asset pricing and reference data, enabling easier
access to LSEG’s full catalogue of fixed income and legal entity data
as well as query data for global exchange-traded instruments.
With increasing automation, liquidity fragmentation and evolving
regulation, there is a growing need for smarter, faster, safer trading
platforms, enabling end-to-end trading workflows, with access to liquidity,
data and execution.
What is LSEG’s response?
We are joining up workflows across multiple areas of our businesses to
create interoperable offerings for our customers.
Example of this in action in Data & Analytics and Capital Markets
We are integrating the trading capabilities of FXall into LSEG Workspace to
create an end-to-end workflow on one open, intuitive platform. FXall users
within Workspace benefit from a seamless FX trading workflow.
The continued demand for datasets and products covering sustainable
finance and investing, commodities, private markets and other alternative
asset classes, which can unlock insights and enhance workflows and
business models, as investors continue to diversify portfolios and strategies.
What is LSEG’s response?
We are enhancing our content and developing new products across these
data categories to support emerging customer needs.
Example of this in action in FTSE Russell
We launched two new fixed income indices in an expansion of our existing
partnership with the Transition Pathway Initiative (FTSE Fixed Income TPI
Climate Transition Index Series and the FTSE Fixed Income TPI Focused
Glidepath Index Series). These indices are designed to help meet the
growing demand of investors and offer a fixed income solution to manage
climate risks and support their climate commitments.
Market participants who believe market data spending will increase
over the next 12 months
>70%
Cloud-enabled business models such as Data-as-a-Service (DaaS),
Managed Data Services
1
and Analytics-as-a-Service are emerging as
firms look to build new solutions and do more with data and analytics.
What is LSEG’s response?
We are developing new and innovative data and analytics solutions for
our clients in the cloud, enabled by our multi-cloud approach.
Example of this in action in Data & Analytics
Our DaaS offering, enabling on-demand data access to accelerate
decision-making, entered general availability in 2024, starting
with environmental, social and governance (ESG) data. This is part of our
strategic partnership with Microsoft – refer to pages 40–41 for more detail.
Process automation, machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI)
continue to enable operational efficiencies, with generative AI (Gen AI)
creating opportunities for further innovation.
What is LSEG’s response?
We have been using more primitive forms of AI and machine learning across
our business for many years and we are starting to build more advanced
AI functionality into our internal processes.
Example of this in action in Group Operations
Using AI and process automation within Content Operations to source and
extract data, we can efficiently expand the breadth and depth of content,
while improving data accuracy and timeliness; in 2024, we delivered
a 40–50% reduction in time taken to process unstructured documents
for fixed income and sustainable finance content sets.
The rise of Gen AI creates opportunities to improve and enhance customer
propositions, alongside a growing customer need for expansive, high-quality
datasets for use in AI models.
What is LSEG’s response?
We are starting to use Gen AI to further modernise our business and
enhance customer productivity. Our future vision is to be a trusted provider
of data for usage by AI models across financial services.
Example of this in action in Data & Analytics
Two examples of Gen AI in our offering: (i) AI Insights API, which leverages
LSEG’s proprietary data and analytics to summarise large volumes of
information using natural language prompts; and (ii) Financial Meeting Prep,
which is an AI-driven Microsoft Teams application powered by LSEG data
and news enabling customers to generate reports about public companies
ahead of client meetings – for more detail on our partnership with Microsoft,
refer to pages 40–41.
Proportion of financial service firms actively adopting AI technology
75%
1 Previously known as Data-Management-as-a-Service.
07 London Stock Exchange Group plc
Annual Report 2024
Strategic Report
Electronification and digitisation
of trading
Regulation, risk management and
the need for capital optimisation
Electronification of financial markets continues to drive trading volume
growth, improve efficiency and enable access to liquidity. This trend is
expected to continue as many asset classes are far from reaching maturity
in adoption of electronic and automated trading.
What is LSEG’s response?
Tradeweb is continuously innovating to remain the platform of choice as
fixed income trading becomes increasingly electronic.
Example of this in action in Capital Markets
Tradeweb launched an enhanced functionality for request-for-quote trading
in US credit markets (RFQ Edge), providing a greater level of market insight
to enable clients to make better-informed trade decisions.
The rise in the use of – and demand for – digital assets across both
retail and institutional investors as well as with central authorities and
asset managers and custodians, is driving increased customer demand
for associated financial markets infrastructure, data and analytics.
What is LSEG’s response?
We are expanding the coverage of our asset classes while adhering to
our rigorous risk standards to support customers navigating emerging
drivers of market activity.
Example of this in action in Post Trade
We received regulatory approval to clear Bitcoin index derivatives traded
on GFO-X through LCH’s new DigitalAssetClear service, demonstrating our
commitment to bringing the benefits of clearing to this growing asset class
and expanding LCH’s services.
Digital platforms are unlocking growth across multiple segments including
digital exchanges, digital payments, online banking and retail wealth, driving
greater demand for efficiency and financial security across the trade lifecycle.
What is LSEG’s response?
In partnership with customers, we are building solutions to protect and
grow their businesses as the rapid pace of technological change presents
new challenges.
Example of this in action in Risk Intelligence
This year, we launched Global Account Verification as part of our Digital
Identity & Fraud offering, which helps organisations protect their customers
by enabling real-time verification of bank accounts and ownership across
an initial 22 countries – for more detail, refer to page 35.
Increase in electronic trading of US corporate bonds
over the last 5 years
180%
Market volatility, seen throughout 2024, highlights the importance of
trusted venues and stable clearing houses that are capable of meeting
demand spikes.
What is LSEG’s response?
Our market infrastructure businesses play a key role in helping participants
to navigate major events. Heightened market volatility tends to be a positive
driver of revenue for parts of our business, such as our Post Trade business
and Tradeweb.
Example of this in action in Post Trade
Our LCH business continued to provide a platform for customers to manage
risk effectively throughout volatility in 2024. We maintained our position as
a global leader in over-the-counter (OTC) interest rate swaps clearing with
our SwapClear offering (12% year-on-year growth); this year SwapClear saw
particular growth across geographies such as the United States (US), APAC and
European Union (EU) due to local market dynamics and product expansion.
A combination of regulatory and capital requirements and pressure
to improve operational efficiency is driving heightened need for our
customers to manage capital and cost. Many are seeking ways to automate
and streamline post-trade workflows for cleared and uncleared OTC
derivatives and optimise how their balance sheets are utilised.
What is LSEG’s response?
We are using our expertise in clearing to drive innovation in the uncleared
space, working alongside our partners to support their regulatory compliance
and capital optimisation needs.
Example of this in action in Post Trade
Our Post Trade Solutions suite brings the benefits of clearing to currently
uncleared trades and consolidates processing across cleared and bilateral.
We have seen good traction in 2024, particularly across the cross-currency
and swaptions market, with SwapAgent adding 10 members and seeing
record volumes (39% increase year-on-year). We have also strengthened
our capabilities with the acquisition of Axoni post-trade technology –
for more detail on Post Trade Solutions, refer to page 39.
The impacts of accelerated digitisation have created new risks for our
clients and their customers. Firms are investing in mitigating these risks,
seeking to better understand their customer base/supply network and
minimising incidences of fraud and illicit activity through anti-money
laundering solutions and digital customer identification.
What is LSEG’s response?
We help our clients comply with mandatory Know Your Customer (KYC),
anti-bribery and corruption, and associated legislation, and support them
in detecting money laundering, and account and payment fraud. We also
help them counter the financing of terrorism, human trafficking, modern-day
slavery and green crime.
Example of this in action in Risk Intelligence
We are investing in the next generation of World-Check, to transform the
underlying data platform so as to improve content curation processes,
increase the speed of customer data updates and enable customers to
better segment data structures.
Share of market participants who have increased spending on
AML/CTF
1
compliance in the past 24 months
2
65%
1 Anti-Money Laundering/Counter Terrorist Financing.
2 Based on a survey of EMEA financial institutions.
Market trends and our response continued
London Stock Exchange Group plc
Annual Report 2024
08
Chair’s statement
Growth in adjusted operating profit
1
+9.5%
2023: +7.9%
Total dividend per share for 2024
130.0p
2023: 115.0p
Returned to shareholders via buybacks in 2024
£1bn
1 Growth is on a constant currency basis.
2024 has been another strong year
for LSEG. Continued revenue growth,
an expanding shareholder base and
consistent returns have strengthened
our position as a leading global
financial markets infrastructure
and data provider.
Don Robert CBE
Chair
London Stock Exchange Group plc
Annual Report 2023
0808
09 London Stock Exchange Group plc
Annual Report 2024
Strategic Report
Chair’s statement continued
Overview
LSEG delivered a strong performance in 2024, as we continued to
transform our business and deliver on our strategy. Total income excluding
recoveries reached £8.5 billion, up 8.4% on a constant currency basis.
Reported operating profit grew 6.7% while reported earnings per share
(EPS) fell 7.3%, reflecting the impact of higher depreciation, amortisation
and impairment and tax charges. Adjusted operating profit rose to
£3.2 billion, up 9.5% on a constant currency basis and adjusted EPS
increased 12.2% as a result of ongoing revenue growth and improving
efficiency. Equity free cash flow rose to £2.2 billion, demonstrating the
strength of our performance.
We have continued our very active approach to capital allocation.
In 2024, we acquired further minority stakes in LCH, taking our ownership
to over 94%, and completed the acquisition of Institutional Cash
Distributors (ICD) through Tradeweb. In the first half, we completed
£1 billion of share buybacks, and in the process supported the final exit
of the consortium of former Refinitiv shareholders, led by Blackstone and
Thomson Reuters, from the LSEG register, bringing further diversification
to our shareholder base. We also divested our 4.92% stake in Euroclear.
The Board is proposing a final dividend of 89.0 pence per share, bringing
the total to 130.0 pence per share, a 13.0% increase.
Governance
The Board seeks to operate to and maintain high governance and
ethical standards. Further detail is available in the Corporate
Governance Report from page 100.
In February 2024, Ashok Vaswani stepped down as Non-Executive
Director of the Board, following his appointment as CEO of Kotak
Mahindra Bank, and I would like to thank him for his contribution.
As announced in November 2023, LSEG’s new CFO, Michel-Alain Proch,
was appointed to the Board in March 2024, subsequent to joining
the Group in February. Michel-Alain brings extensive financial
leadership experience and his deep experience across global financial
infrastructure and IT data solutions firms is proving to be invaluable as
we deliver the next stage of LSEG’s strategic growth. In December, we
announced that Lloyd Pitchford will join the Board as a Non-Executive
Director and member of the Audit, Risk and Nomination Committees, with
effect from 30 April 2025. For more information on Lloyd’s appointment,
please refer to the Nomination Committee report on page 110.
Our Board seeks to meet the various goals on gender and ethnic
diversity set out in the Financial Conduct Authority’s UK Listing Rules,
Parker Review and FTSE Women Leaders Review. I am pleased to
confirm that we meet the Parker Review recommendations, with one
of the Board’s Directors being from a minority ethnic background.
One of our four senior Board positions is held by a woman, consistent
with the recommendations outlined in the Listing Rules and FTSE
Women Leaders Review. At the end of 2024, as four of our eleven
Board members were women, we fell slightly below the target of
40% female representation on the Board. We recognise, however,
that as the Board refreshes its composition to ensure the right mix
of experience and tenures, this may result in periods of time where it
does not fully meet its diversity ambitions, but we will seek to ensure
that these are met in due course. For more information on Board
diversity and the process followed in relation to Board appointments,
please see the Nomination Committee report from page 110.
As part of our commitment to visit one international office per year to
engage with colleagues, the Board visited LSEG’s offices in New York
City to hear more from them and learn about our customers in the
region. The Board also participated in four virtual sessions with
colleagues around the world throughout the year.
Sustainability
Given our central role in capital markets, our global footprint and presence
throughout the trade lifecycle, LSEG is uniquely positioned to play a leading
role in supporting the transition to a sustainable future. As described in the
Sustainability section of the Strategic Report pages 56 to 72, our
sustainability strategy sets out how we work with our customers, colleagues,
partners, communities and policymakers to support this transition.
Addressing climate change is a priority for the Board, stakeholders and
shareholders. We have two targets that commit us to reducing our
operational emissions by 50% by 2030, from a 2019 baseline. By the end
of 2024, we had reduced our Scope 1 and 2 emissions by 83% against
the baseline, and reduced our Scope 3 emissions (FERA, business travel
and colleagues commuting) by 49% against the baseline. We also have
a target to ensure that 67% of Scope 3 emissions from purchased goods
and services are covered by science-based targets by the end of 2026.
We closed the year at 51%. We remain on track to achieve all of our
Science-Based Target Initiative-approved targets.
2025 will mark the LSEG Foundation’s 15th anniversary as a vehicle
for community investment and engagement. We work with charity and
non-governmental organisation (NGO) partners to deliver a range of
programmes to enable economic empowerment through education,
employment and enterprise. Our goal is to impact one million people
by 2030, and it is encouraging to see that, in 2024 alone, the work of
the Foundation impacted over 260,000 people.
Capital markets reform
The Board is fully supportive of the ongoing reform agenda across
the United Kingdom’s capital markets. As a member of the Capital Markets
Industry Taskforce (CMIT), the London Stock Exchange is playing a leading
role to ensure that the UK remains competitive on the international stage
and an attractive place to do business. In July 2024, the Financial Conduct
Authority (FCA) delivered the largest set of reforms to our Listing Rules in
decades, and we will continue to work closely with the UK Government
and regulators to help drive the flow of domestic capital to back UK private
and public companies through pension reform and the Mansion House
Compact, among others.
Remuneration policy
As part of this work to ensure UK capital markets’ competitiveness, the Board
recognises the strategic importance of aligning Executive Director pay with
company performance in ensuring a competitive market in the UK. We were
pleased that our proposed revisions to the Directors’ Remuneration Policy,
which is based on a pay-for-performance philosophy, passed with the
overwhelming support of our shareholders with 89% votes in favour at the
2024 AGM. Our clear focus as a Board has not changed: we will continue to
ensure our approach to remuneration drives LSEG’s growth and rewards high
performance. Our Directors’ Remuneration Report on pages 122 to 147 sets out
how we have implemented the policy in 2024 and our approach for 2025.
Summary
2024 has been another strong year for LSEG. Continued revenue
growth, an expanding shareholder base and consistent returns
have strengthened our position as a leading global financial markets
infrastructure and data provider. Our investments in governance, global
talent and the power of technology to reimagine markets are driving
further transformation in our industry, and we remain well positioned
to deliver on our strategic objectives.
On behalf of the Board, I want to thank our teams worldwide for their
commitment and I’m looking further to continuing to build on our
success in the coming year.
Don Robert CBE
Chair
26 February 2025
The commentary in this section includes references to adjusted
performance measures that provide supplemental data relevant to an
understanding of the Group’s financial performance. For more information
on these measures, please refer to our glossary on page 252.
London Stock Exchange Group plc
Annual Report 2024
10
Chief Executive
Officer’s statement
Growth in total income excluding recoveries
(organic, constant currency basis)
+7.7%
2023: +7.1%
Growth in adjusted earnings per share
+12.2%
2023: +1.9%
In 2024, we continued to make
good progress in the commercial
and strategic transformation of
our business.
LSEG is maintaining a rapid pace
of innovation as we strengthen our
solutions across the business, and we
remain well positioned to benefit
from powerful industry trends and
drive change across financial markets.
David Schwimmer
Chief Executive Officer
London Stock Exchange Group plc
Annual Report 2024
10
11 London Stock Exchange Group plc
Annual Report 2024
Strategic Report
Introduction
In 2024, we continued to make good progress in the commercial
and strategic transformation of our business. LSEG is maintaining
a rapid pace of innovation as we strengthen our solutions across the
business, and we remain well positioned to benefit from powerful
industry trends and drive change across financial markets.
Following the acquisition of Refinitiv four years ago, we have
transformed LSEG from a European regional exchange group to
a diversified, global leader in financial markets infrastructure and
data services. Alongside our heritage in capital markets, LSEG is the
world’s number one real-time data business, the leading global provider
of KYC and AML background check information and a leading global
index and benchmark provider; in addition, our clearing house is
super-systemic. LSEG is headquartered in London, and we operate
in every major financial centre, with over 26,000 people serving over
44,000 customers in over 170 countries.
The contributions from people across our business are driving the
transformation of LSEG and the wider industry. We have an ambition
to become one of the world’s great companies and I am proud of what
we have accomplished this year in pursuit of that goal.
Performance in 2024
2024 was another year of strong, broad-based growth across the Group.
Total income excluding recoveries increased 7.7% on an organic, constant
currency basis, reflecting the strength of our proposition and the depth of
our relationships with customers. Annual Subscription Value (ASV) growth
at the year end was 6.3%, consistent with guidance.
In our Data & Analytics division, we drove growth through innovative
products and significant new features on our Workspace platform.
We also integrated news from Dow Jones publications and increased
our private market data coverage following an enhanced agreement
with Dun & Bradstreet. We made further progress on the migration to
Workspace and remain on track to sunset Eikon by the end of the first
half of 2025.
In our Data & Feeds business, we significantly expanded the coverage
of our real-time data offering, adding over 100 new feeds and supplying
data from over 35 new venues from around the world. We also launched
cloud distribution of our full tick Real Time offering, to meet needs from
compliance, risk and market surveillance teams for comprehensive full tick
data. Customers using our DataScope product can now use Snowflake
to access data, with more cloud providers scheduled to be rolled out
through 2025. And we launched our Data-as-a-Service (DaaS) initiative,
which we have been building as part of our strategic partnership with
Microsoft, to customers following external pilots.
We have a powerful Analytics offering with around 300 models covering
a broad range of asset classes. Historically, our offering was fragmented
across multiple distribution platforms and user interfaces, making it hard
for customers to find or access many of our analytics. In the first half
of 2024, we launched AI Insights, a single, consolidated distribution
channel via API, making it quicker and easier for customers to find
the information they need.
At FTSE Russell, we have seen strong demand from customers for
our differentiated climate and multi-asset class solutions and have
won a number of awards for our innovation in this area. Alongside these
innovative new products, we are driving growth by increasing areas of
collaboration between FTSE Russell and different parts of the Group.
Data from both Tradeweb and Post Trade is being used to enhance
benchmark pricing and support new index products.
Risk Intelligence performed well over the year, with strong business
momentum and customer demand in our screening business,
World-Check. Trends such as digitisation, increasing payment fraud
and evolving regulation continue to build demand for our digital identity
verification and fraud-prevention businesses. Risk Intelligence has
started using our ecommerce platform which offers smaller customers
a self-serve capability when buying our products for the first time.
Our Capital Markets business is growing well, driven by a particularly
strong year for Tradeweb. Tradeweb’s innovation in new trading
protocols and execution tools like Portfolio Trading is aiding the
electronification of interest rate and credit markets. As this trading
evolves, it creates the need for new risk management tools, like
Tradeweb’s automated pricing engine. The acquisitions of r8fin and
ICD during the year further expanded Tradeweb’s capabilities and
customer channels. Tradeweb works with our other businesses across
the industry lifecycle, from the integration of FXall into the Tradeweb
platform to the government bond price benchmarks provided by FTSE
Russell. Tradeweb is a great example of our focus on partnership and
the power of our end-to-end business model, but we are still in the
early stages of realising the full opportunity there.
After a challenging start to the year, given the globally subdued IPO
and equities trading environment, our equities business grew in the
second half as the London Stock Exchange gained market share in
trading against a backdrop of strong market activity. In July, the FCA
implemented changes to the UK Listing Rules designed to ensure
the future competitiveness of the UK market. We also launched the
new Main Market on the London Stock Exchange. The London Stock
Exchange is by far the largest capital-raising venue in Europe with
£25 billion total capital raised on our markets in 2024. Our FX
businesses returned to growth as increased volatility, driven by
geopolitical uncertainty, spurred a boost in volumes.
Following a very strong 2023, Post Trade continued to see growth
despite the impact of the termination of the clearing contract with
Euronext. We grew our core clearing businesses, adding new
SwapClear and ForexClear members and expanding credit default
swap (CDS) clearing in the US. The industry is also demanding common
standards and greater capital efficiencies in the uncleared space.
We now have five banks using our Smart Clearing Service helping
to optimise their capital and margin in FX forwards. And we continue
to work closely with our industry partners to build out our broader suite
of Post Trade Solutions, providing trade compression and optimisation,
risk management, margining and collateral services across the
uncleared markets.
Partnering to transform global financial markets
Our strategic transformation enables us to play a critical role in shaping
the future of financial markets.
Our partnership with Microsoft was formed in 2022 with the goal of
reshaping global finance. We’re now beginning to see the initial results,
with the first products entering into commercial availability at the end
of 2024. For example, Financial Meeting Prep is designed to enhance
efficiency by providing a Gen AI-driven capability to prepare for
meetings. LSEG AI Insights leverages LSEG’s proprietary data and
analytics to help summarise large volumes of information using natural
language capabilities. These products are great examples of how we
have combined LSEG’s depth and breadth of high-quality data with
Microsoft’s technological expertise to create the transformative solutions
our customers need. We expect to see further products launch in 2025,
including a next-generation Workspace experience using AI, a new
Workspace application in Teams and a new Workspace add-in for Excel.
Chief Executive Officer’s statement continued
The commentary in this section includes references to adjusted
performance measures that provide supplemental data relevant to an
understanding of the Group’s financial performance. For more information
on these measures, please refer to our glossary on page 252.
London Stock Exchange Group plc
Annual Report 2024
12
Executive management team
Day-to-day management of the Group is led by the Chief Executive
Officer, David Schwimmer, supported by the Executive Committee.
The team meets regularly to review a wide range of business matters,
including financial performance, investment and projects, talent
development, corporate culture, implementation of strategy,
and setting and monitoring of performance targets.
Profiles of the Executive team are provided as at January 2025.
For further information on David Schwimmer, as well as our Chief
Financial Officer, Michel-Alain Proch, who are also members of the
Board of Directors, see our Board of Directors overview on page 96.
Changes to the Executive Committee
Upon his retirement, Anthony McCarthy was replaced on the
Executive Committee by our new Chief Information Officer,
Irfan Hussain, in January 2024.
Anna Manz (Chief Financial Officer) left LSEG in February 2024 and
was replaced on the Executive Committee by Michel-Alain Proch.
Murray Roos (Head of Capital Markets) left LSEG in April 2024.
Daniel Maguire took on leadership of Capital Markets in an expanded
role as Head of LSEG Markets.
David Shalders (Chief Operating Officer) left LSEG in June 2024 and
was replaced on the Executive Committee by Pascal Boillat in July 2024.
Satvinder Singh (Head of Data & Analytics) left LSEG in December 2024.
For more information on the interim management of Data & Analytics,
refer to our Divisional review on page 32.
Chief Executive Officer’s statement continued
We also welcomed the UK Government’s confirmation that it will
proceed with implementing the necessary regulation to allow for
a new Private Intermittent Securities and Capital Exchange System
(PISCES). The creation of this new crossover market could be significant
for UK capital markets. PISCES will provide private companies with
choice in how and when they access liquidity and gives shareholders
opportunities to enter and exit investments. We look forward to
engaging with the UK Government, regulators and all stakeholders
to develop a regulatory framework and expect to launch our venue
in 2025.
Multi-year growth potential
The depth and breadth of our offering is a strategic differentiator.
We span multiple asset classes, provide services throughout the
trade lifecycle, and our model is aligned with powerful growth trends
that are shaping the financial services sector. In a business as diversified
as ours, we are not immune to consolidation in our customer base,
such as the cancellation of Credit Suisse contracts in 2024, following
their acquisition by UBS, but we continue to see opportunities for
long-term growth.
These include new product launches as part of our partnership with
Microsoft. Developments in our products, including enhancements
using Gen AI, and our continued investment and innovation are
improving distribution and opening new markets. Our superior data
capabilities position us well to capitalise on increasing demand for data.
We are investing in both our data coverage and distribution to ensure
that customers can access the data they need, in a way that suits them.
The electronification and digitisation of trading present significant
opportunities for Tradeweb and our Post Trade businesses.
We have consistently been delivering on the guidance we set out at
our Capital Markets Day in 2023: accelerating growth, improving margin
and improving our already-strong cash conversion. We have or are
building leading businesses across capital markets, and we will continue
to enhance our customer proposition to become the partner of choice
across the financial markets value chain.
All of this is made possible by our exceptional colleagues around the
world. Our values of Integrity, Partnership, Excellence and Change
guide everything we do and support the creation of a high-performing,
inclusive culture that welcomes diverse perspectives. On behalf of the
Executive Committee, I would like to extend my thanks to all our people
for their continued hard work and dedication as we transform LSEG and
shape the future of the financial markets.
David Schwimmer
CEO, LSEG
26 February 2025
For more information on our CEO – refer to our
Board of Directors’ profiles on pages 96 to 99.
13 London Stock Exchange Group plc
Annual Report 2024
Strategic Report
Chief Executive Officer’s statement continued
David Schwimmer
Group Chief Executive Officer
Joined LSEG in 2018
Michel-Alain Proch
Group Chief Financial Officer
Joined LSEG in February 2024
Irfan Hussain
Chief Information Officer
Joined LSEG in January 2024
Irfan leads LSEG’s technology
and engineering team, driving
innovation in global financial
markets. In a 28-year career
at Goldman Sachs, Irfan held
many senior positions including,
most recently, Chief Operating
& Strategy Officer in the
Engineering division.
Daniel Maguire
Head of Markets and CEO,
LCH Group
Joined LSEG in 2008
Daniel has held various senior
roles across LCH and LSEG,
with 25 years of experience
in capital markets, risk and
default management, product
management and regulatory
strategy, and over 20 years spent
at LSEG across two tenures.
Balbir Bakhshi
Chief Risk Officer
Joined LSEG in 2021
With 30 years of experience at
global financial institutions, Balbir
oversees risk management at
LSEG, including risk identification
and mitigation. Previously Head of
Non-Financial Risk Management
at Deutsche Bank.
Ron Lefferts
Head of Sales &
Account Management
Joined LSEG in 2021
Ron leads LSEG’s global sales
team to drive the growth of our
products and solutions. Ron’s
25+ years of experience include
senior leadership roles with
IBM and, most recently, he was
Global Leader of Technology
Consulting at Protiviti.
Erica Bourne
Chief People Officer
Joined LSEG in 2023
As CPO, Erica leads LSEG’s
HR policies and programmes.
With over 15 years of experience,
Erica has held a number of
leadership and executive roles
across technology, consulting
and financial services and
previously led the People
function at Burberry Group.
Catherine Johnson
General Counsel
Joined LSEG in 1996
Catherine manages a global team
of lawyers and compliance
professionals, advising the Board and
senior executives on key legal and
compliance issues and strategic
initiatives. Catherine qualified as a
lawyer in 1993 and has held a number
of senior roles in her career at LSEG.
Pascal Boillat
Chief Operating Officer
Joined LSEG in July 2024
Pascal oversees operational
activities at LSEG, bringing over
35 years’ experience in senior
operational and technology roles
for global financial services firms.
Most recently, he was Group
Executive, Enterprise Services
& Chief Information Officer at
Commonwealth Bank of Australia
(CBA) where he managed
technology, operations and
data management.
Executive management team seen left to right
Daniel Maguire, Erica Bourne, Irfan Hussain, Michel-Alain Proch, David Schwimmer,
Ron Lefferts, Balbir Bakhshi, Pascal Boillat, Catherine Johnson
13 London Stock Exchange Group plc
Annual Report 2024
London Stock Exchange Group plc
Annual Report 2024
14
With market-leading
positions built on trusted
partnerships and aligned
to attractive long-term
trends, LSEG’s highly
cash-generative, well-
diversified financial model,
driven by growing and
largely recurring revenue,
offers a compelling
investment story.
A compelling
investment story
We are globally essential
— We provide services in more than 170 countries,
with operations in over 60.
— Unlike many of our competitors, we are not heavily
focused on any single market or region.
We are multi-asset class, with leading market positions
— We have leading data, trading and clearing franchises
in equities, foreign exchange and fixed income.
— We also have a growing presence in commodities
and derivatives, and are investing to grow in private
markets and digital assets.
We are seamlessly connected, operating across
the trade lifecycle
— We are leaders in pre-trade research, counterparty risk
management, execution, benchmarking and clearing.
— We are increasingly building connections between our
businesses, developing innovative new services and
improving workflow for our customers.
We are a trusted, long-term partner
— The depth, breadth and quality of our data is deeply trusted
to power the processes of major institutions globally.
— We operate and grow a number of key platforms that
were once owned and developed by our customers –
for example the London Stock Exchange, London Clearing
House and Tradeweb.
— We are open – customers can easily combine our data
with theirs, or access third-party platforms through us.
What differentiates our business
for our customers…
15 London Stock Exchange Group plc
Annual Report 2024
Strategic Report
A compelling investment story continued
We operate in growing markets and have diverse
revenue streams
— All of our divisions operate in addressable markets with a healthy
growth profile – at least mid-single digit % growth or better.
— Through the Microsoft partnership we can address new
markets offering significant additional growth opportunities.
— Our revenue is diversified by product, market and customer –
with our top 250 customers only accounting for c.45% of revenue.
Our revenue is high quality and high visibility
— Over 70% of our income is recurring in nature and benefits
from long-term customer relationships. Our services are
vital to our customers’ businesses.
— Our transactional revenue, which comes mainly from
Tradeweb and Post Trade, is very high quality with strong
existing positions and long-term growth drivers.
— Post Trade total income compound annual growth rate (CAGR)
was 12% 2019 – 2024 and Tradeweb’s revenue CAGR was 18%.
We generate uncorrelated growth
— We are not over-exposed to any single macroeconomic
or industry measure – be it GDP growth, debt issuance,
volatility or equity markets performance.
— We have achieved consistent mid to high single-digit organic
revenue growth since 2018, despite significant and unforeseen
factors – including the Covid-19 pandemic, the Russia/Ukraine
War and the rapid increase in inflation and interest rates.
Our cash generation is strong and growing, and we continue
to reinvest actively
— We generated £2.2 billion of free cash flow
1
in 2024, and
expect our cumulative free cash flow to exceed net income
over the medium term.
— This allows us to invest in organic growth, grow the dividend,
fund mergers and acquisitions (M&A) and return excess capital
to shareholders – including £2.5 billion of share buybacks in
the last three years.
— Our adjusted earnings per share (AEPS) and dividend CAGRs
over the last 20 years have been 15% and 18% respectively.
— If we continue to deliver on our guidance of mid to high single-
digit organic income growth, improving margins and decreasing
capital intensity, free cash flow is set to grow substantially.
1 For a reconciliation to statutory free cash flow, refer to our Financial review
on page 54.
…is also good for our shareholders
Recurring revenue (as a % of total income incl. recoveries)
74%
Equity free cash flow generated in 2024
£2.2bn
For more information on our business
model – refer to pages 4 to 5.
Find out more about our products and
services in our Divisional reviews on
pages 32 to 39.
Countries we serve
170+
Countries where we operate
60+
London Stock Exchange Group plc
Annual Report 2024
16 London Stock Exchange Group plc
Annual Report 2024
16
Making more possible with Dow Jones
Our partnership is enabling
Dow Jones to benefit from
our world-class data and
analytics capabilities to support
a data-driven newsroom
across all of its channels.
David Schwimmer
CEO
LSEG Group plc
By combining the strength
of both brands, we are
serving the needs of
LSEG Workspace users and
enhancing our newsrooms.
Almar Latour
CEO of Dow Jones and Publisher of The Wall Street Journal
17 London Stock Exchange Group plc
Annual Report 2024
Strategic Report
17 London Stock Exchange Group plc
Annual Report 2024
Strategic Report
In July 2024, we announced a multi-year data, news and
analytics partnership with Dow Jones, bringing significant
benefits to both companies and their customers.
The partnership is another clear example of how we are
committed to providing the leading news and analytics
platform for customers, while also becoming a critical
data partner to one of the world’s leading providers of
trusted financial news and insight. Combined with our
long-term agreement to be the exclusive distributor
of Reuters news to the financial community, this gives
LSEG one of the most comprehensive and relevant
news offerings in the market.
Highlights of the partnership include:
— The enhancement of LSEG Workspace with integrated
news and commentary from Dow Jones’s leading
news brands, which include The Wall Street Journal,
Barron’s, Dow Jones Newswires and MarketWatch;
in addition, Dow Jones’s Chinese, German and
Japanese-language news now available in
Workspace, all at no additional cost;
— The deployment of LSEG’s Data & Analytics tools
across Dow Jones newsrooms, including LSEG
Workspace, Datastream, Fundamentals & Estimates,
StarMine models, and Pricing and Reference
data, along with pre-eminent deals data, insights
and league tables delivered through our SDC
Platinum service;
— The use of LSEG’s world-class Data & Analytics
capabilities – including more than 40 years of deals
data, insights and league tables for M&A advisory
and capital markets – across Dow Jones’s leading
digital and print properties; and
— The co-development of an enhanced news
experience within Workspace, curated by
Dow Jones senior editors to showcase the top
news from across the full range of Dow Jones
news brands, individually tailored to meet the
needs of the Workspace audience.
In addition, the combination of real-time,
industry-leading news from Dow Jones newsrooms
and LSEG’s cutting-edge classification, tagging and
search capabilities will result in expanded feed offerings.
LSEG offers its existing subscribers access to Dow
Jones’s text feeds and this content contributes to the
ongoing enhancement of the Group’s news analytics
services, complementing its award-winning real-time
news, news archive and news analytics feed services.
Making more possible with Dow Jones continued
London Stock Exchange Group plc
Annual Report 2024
18
2024 financial KPIs
We are focused on delivering consistently
strong financial performance and achieving
the targets we have set.
These core financial KPIs demonstrate
the value we are delivering for both our
customers and shareholders and they
show that our strategy is working.
Key performance
indicators (KPIs)
Definition
Income growth, independent
of FX movements and any impact
from acquisitions or disposals.
Why this is important for LSEG
Income growth is a key measure
of our success since we operate
in growing markets and aim
to hold or grow market share.
At our Capital Markets Day in
2023, we outlined that we expect
to deliver mid to high single-digit
organic income growth over
the medium term.
Analysis
We delivered organic income
growth of 7.7% in 2024, with a
good performance across all five
of our divisions. Growth in Data &
Analytics accelerated through the
year as we further leverage the
cloud to enhance access to our
data and drive higher penetration
of Workspace. In Capital Markets,
Tradeweb delivered an
exceptional year, with strong
market activity across asset
classes and making further
share gains. In 2025, we expect
organic constant currency
growth in total income excluding
recoveries of 6.5–7.5%, including
an acceleration in Data & Analytics
organic growth and more
normalised growth at Tradeweb.
Organic income growth
1
+7.7%
2023: +7.1%
2021
2022
2023
2024
7.7%
7.1%
6.3%
2
5.8%
Link to strategic objectives
Income growth is key in delivering
against adjusted operating
profit (AOP) targets, which carry
a 60% weighting in determining
performance-related pay.
Definition
A point-in-time measure of
our book of recurring contracts
vs 12 months ago.
Why this is important for LSEG
A high proportion of our revenues
across Data & Analytics, FTSE
Russell and Risk Intelligence are
subscription-based with a high
degree of visibility. ASV growth
measures the year-on-year growth
of that recurring book of business
at a point in time. ASV growth
should act as a leading indicator for
subscription revenue growth and
has three key drivers: retention,
new sales and price increases.
Analysis
We achieved ASV growth of 6.3%
as at December 2024, in line with
our guidance of around 6% and
supported by a positive Net Sales
performance, partly offset by the
impact from Credit Suisse-related
cancellations during the year.
We have made significant
progress since the acquisition
of Refinitiv, accelerating ASV
growth by 330 basis points (bps).
By building stronger customer
relationships and making targeted
investments in our offering,
we have driven better retention
and increased our price yield
by around 100bps.
ASV growth
+6.3%
2023: +6.7%
2021
2022
2023
2024
6.3%
6.7%
6.2%
2
4.6%
Link to strategic objectives
ASV growth can be an indicator
of future income growth. Delivery
against Future Growth KPIs carries
a 15% weighting in determining
performance-related pay.
Organic income
growth
1
Annual Subscription
Value (ASV) growth
These KPIs align with our Group Strategic
Objectives (GSOs) which help determine Executive
Director remuneration and performance-related
pay for all employees. Further detail on the
GSO performance assessment can be found
in our Directors’ Remuneration Report on
pages 134 to 135.
1 Organic constant currency income growth,
excluding recoveries.
2 2022 growth excludes the impact of the Russia/Ukraine War.
3 For more information on the criteria that constitute
non-underlying items, see page 175.
4 Based on an equivalent perimeter of the Group as in 2023.
5 To calculate capex intensity, we use cash capital expenditure,
excluding sales commissions.
19 London Stock Exchange Group plc
Annual Report 2024
Strategic Report
Key performance indicators (KPIs) continued
Definition
EBITDA – excluding non-
underlying items
3
– over total
income (excluding recoveries).
Why this is important for LSEG
We are building a more efficient,
scalable business and expanding
underlying profitability over time,
demonstrating the intrinsic
operating leverage of the Group.
As we accelerate our revenue
growth while modernising our
technology infrastructure and
streamlining our cost base,
improving margin allows us
to reinvest for future growth.
Analysis
We delivered a 2024 adjusted
EBITDA margin of 48.8%, an
improvement of 160bps year-on-
year. This reflects strong progress
in accelerating top-line growth
while modernising our technology
infrastructure and shifting to
a more efficient allocation of
resource. This also included
benefits relating to fair value
movements on embedded
derivative contracts. Excluding
these items, EBITDA margin
was 48.4%, a constant-currency
improvement of 80bps. Across
2023–2026, we expect to
increase adjusted EBITDA margin
by c.250bps
4
as the benefit from
top-line growth more than offsets
underlying inflation and our
reinvestments in growth.
Adjusted EBITDA margin
48.8%
2023: 47.2%
2021
2022
2023
2024
48.8%
47.2%
47.8%
47.8%
Link to strategic objectives
EBITDA margin performance is
a key factor in determining Group
AOP, while also aligning with our
Efficiency objective.
Definition
Earnings per share, adjusted to
remove any non-underlying items.
3
Why this is important for LSEG
AEPS is a key financial metric that
is both central to our valuation
and a significant element of
employees’ performance-related
remuneration. Growth in our
AEPS reflects our degree of
success in driving strong top-line
performance, as well as managing
costs including tax and interest,
and capital allocation.
Analysis
Adjusted earnings per share
(AEPS) from continuing operations
was 363.5 pence. The 12.2%
increase in AEPS year-on-year
was driven by growth in
underlying profitability, partly
offset by higher depreciation
– reflecting our continued
investment in technology and
product, as well as amortisation
of capex to deliver Refinitiv
synergies – and higher net
finance expenses due to
increased interest rates. Our
adjusted effective tax rate also
increased year-on-year, driven
by a higher UK corporate tax
rate from 1 April 2023. Share
buybacks reduced the average
share count in 2024, which
acted as a tailwind for AEPS.
Adjusted earnings per share
363.5p
2023: 323.9p
2021
2022
2023
2024
363.5p
323.9p
317.8p
272.4p
Link to strategic objectives
Earnings per share growth is
a reflection of profitability, linked
to Group AOP and aligning
with our Efficiency objective.
Definition
Capital expenditure
5
as
a proportion of total income
excluding recoveries.
Why this is important for LSEG
We have been addressing historic
underinvestment in Refinitiv’s
infrastructure and investing to
deliver appropriate synergies from
the integration. We still have a
wide range of growth initiatives
to pursue, but as the bulk of the
Refinitiv integration investment
ends, we expect capex intensity
to reduce from 11–12% in 2024 to
a high single-digit percentage of
revenue over the medium term.
Analysis
Capex intensity in 2024 was
11.3%, 160bps lower than in
2023. Cash capex
4
in the year of
£957 million reflected ongoing
investment in key growth
programmes, including Workspace
product development with
Microsoft, Post Trade Solutions
infrastructure, and continued
investment in Tradeweb. In
addition, we continued to invest
in the integration of acquired
businesses, the vast majority of
which related to delivering the
revenue and cost synergies from
the Refinitiv acquisition. We expect
total capex of around 10% of total
income excluding recoveries
in 2025.
Capex intensity
11.3%
2023: 12.9%
2021
2022
2023
2024
11.3%
12.9%
13.0%
11.5%
Link to strategic objectives
Falling capex intensity is a product
of both accelerating growth and
disciplined investment, in line
with our Efficiency objective.
Definition
Annual incremental revenue
delivered through synergies
from the Refinitiv integration.
Why this is important for LSEG
By harnessing our vast data
to build new products, and
through cross-sell and distribution
opportunities, we are generating
value from the Refinitiv acquisition.
In March 2023, we raised our
target for runrate revenue
synergies from £225 million to
£350–400 million by the end of
2025, incurring £550–600 million
in costs to achieve.
Analysis
By the end of 2024, we had
delivered £292 million of runrate
revenue synergies and we remain
on track to achieve our target of
£350–400 million by the end of
2025. We are delivering synergies
against three key categories. We
are cross-selling data products
to new customers, such as the
underlying pricing data behind
FTSE Russell indices, and utilising
our data to enhance existing
products and build new products.
We have also launched our
ecommerce platform, which is
beginning to deliver synergies
through new sales. With the
Refinitiv integration now largely
complete, and synergy delivery
ahead of original targets, we will
end detailed monitoring of the
synergy programme going forward.
Runrate revenue synergies
£292m
2023: £158m
2021
2022
2023
2024
£292m
£158m
£68m
£15m
Link to strategic objectives
Revenue synergies contribute
to income growth, which is an
important factor in determining
Group AOP.
Adjusted EBITDA
margin
Capex
intensity
Adjusted earnings
per share (AEPS)
Runrate revenue
synergies
London Stock Exchange Group plc
Annual Report 2024
20
Key performance indicators (KPIs) continued
2024 non-financial KPIs
At LSEG, we’re committed to creating
a merit-based environment where diverse
talent can thrive, and to driving the growth
of a green and sustainable economy.
These five core non-financial KPIs measure
our progress, but also help us highlight the
areas where we can still improve.
Definition
Our engagement index reflects
employee responses to questions
on overall satisfaction and
likelihood to recommend LSEG
as a place to work.
Why this is important for LSEG
We recognise the importance
of establishing an inclusive
workplace where opinions can
be openly shared, contributions
recognised, and individual and
team achievements celebrated.
Analysis
Our overall engagement score
remains relatively stable at 74,
one point lower than in 2023.
Almost 21,000 colleagues (81%)
shared feedback via LSEG
Engage, a survey that offers
colleagues the opportunity
to provide feedback and
improvement points on a range of
topics. The survey revealed that
most colleagues feel supported
by their People Leader and can
successfully balance work and
personal life, though some
areas for improvement were also
identified, such as communication
from senior management.
For more information, refer to
the Sustainability section of this
report on page 59.
Engagement index
74
2023: 75
2021
2022
2023
2024
74
75
75
73
Link to strategic objectives
This aligns with our Culture
objective: to leverage embedded
values to drive an inclusive,
high-performance culture.
Definition
The proportion of female
representation in senior
leadership roles.
Why this is important for LSEG
We strongly believe in promoting
a merit-based diverse and
inclusive organisation, which
ensures opportunity to progress
to leadership roles, regardless
of gender. We are committed to
building a leadership team that
incorporates a broad range of
perspectives and management
styles in order to make LSEG
a better business.
Analysis
At the end of 2024, we
maintained our female
representation with 41% of women
in senior leadership positions.
We will continue to focus on
merit-based inclusive hiring and
progression at senior leadership
level, monitoring progress through
our business-unit specific action
plans around talent acquisition
and talent management practices.
For more information on gender
diversity at LSEG, refer to page 60.
Gender diversity in leadership
41%
2023: 42%
2021
2022
2023
2024
41%
42%
40%
33%
Link to strategic objectives
This KPI aligns with
our Culture objective.
Engagement
index
Gender diversity
in leadership
These KPIs align with our Group Strategic
Objectives (GSOs). Further detail on the
GSO performance assessment can be found
in our Directors’ Remuneration Report on
pages 134 to 135.
For more detail on LSEG’s sustainability approach,
including Equity, Diversity and Inclusion goals,
refer to the Sustainability section of this report
on pages 56 to 72.
1 Reduction of Scope 1, Scope 2 (market-based) and selected
Scope 3 (business travel, home working, commuting, FERA)
emissions vs a 2019 baseline. This metric applies to all of the
emissions within scope of our Climate Transition Plan (CTP).
For more information on our CTP, refer to pages 66.
2 Our 2023 emissions figure has been retrospectively revised to
reflect corrections for historical errors in calculation.
3 Like many companies, we saw a steep reduction in our emissions
during the Covid-19 pandemic, driven by lockdowns and travel
restrictions. As we have emerged from the pandemic and as the
Group continues to grow, emissions have naturally increased,
but we remain fully committed to deliver on our targets.
21 London Stock Exchange Group plc
Annual Report 2024
Strategic Report
Key performance indicators (KPIs) continued
Definition
The proportion of ethnically
diverse representation in
senior leadership roles.
Why this is important for LSEG
We are committed to providing
merit-based opportunity,
recognising exceptional talent
from a wide range of different
backgrounds. This enables
us to foster an environment
where a blend of different
perspectives goes into making
the most important decisions
for our business.
Analysis
At the end of 2024, we increased
our ethnic minority representation
in senior leadership positions
by two percentage points to 16%.
We will continue to focus on
merit-based inclusive hiring and
progression at senior leadership
level, monitoring progress through
our business-unit specific action
plans around talent acquisition
and talent management practices.
For more information on ethnic
diversity at LSEG, refer to page 60.
Ethnic diversity in leadership
16%
2023: 14%
2021
2022
2023
2024
16%
14%
15%
16%
Link to strategic objectives
This KPI aligns with
our Culture objective.
Definition
The total number of issuers across
the Green Economy Mark, the
Sustainable Bond Market and
the Voluntary Carbon Market.
Why this is important for LSEG
Stimulating the green economy
is central to our purpose. We can
measure the progress we are
making here by tracking the
overall level of issuer engagement
in sustainable finance across the
London Stock Exchange, with the
goal of growing the number of
issuers over time.
Analysis
In 2024, we continued to promote
sustainable investment and
growth in the green economy.
As at the end of the year, we had
235 total issuers across our
Sustainable Bond Market and
Voluntary Carbon Market or
that proudly display the Green
Economy Mark. This was relatively
in line with the prior year. In 2024,
£57 billion was raised through 143
transactions on our Sustainable
Bond Market, taking the total
raised since inception to almost
£300 billion. We also co-launched
a Climate Aware index series
that incentivises investment in
companies with robust plans on
how to successfully navigate
the climate transition. For more
information, refer to page 34.
Sustainable issuers
235
2023: 236
2021
2022
2023
2024
235
236
217
217
Link to strategic objectives
This KPI aligns with our
Sustainability objective: to support
the Group’s ambition to establish
LSEG as a strategic enabler of
sustainable economic growth.
Definition
The change in the amount of
carbon emissions we produce as
a direct result of Group activities,
relative to our 2019 baseline.
Why this is important for LSEG
We are a member of the
United Nations Climate Change
‘Race to Zero’ and we have set
science-based targets to reduce
our carbon emissions with an
ambition of reaching net zero
by 2040. We aim to halve our
operational emissions by 2030
from a 2019 baseline.
Analysis
By the end of 2024, we had
reduced our total carbon footprint
by 54% from a 2019 baseline.
The reduction compared with
2023 was driven in part by a fall in
business travel. Over 90% of our
total carbon footprint is made of
Scope 3 emissions, the majority of
which relate to purchased goods
and services. In order to reduce
these, we are actively engaging
with our supply chain to support
them in setting their own
emissions reduction targets.
We have a separate target to
ensure that 67% of Scope 3
emissions from purchased goods
and services are covered by
science-based targets by the end
of 2026, and we are on target to
achieve this, closing the year at 51%.
Reduction of Scope 1, 2, 3 (FERA)
1
-54%
2023: -34%
2
2021
2022
2023
2024
-54%
-34%
2
-57%
-77%
3
Link to strategic objectives
This KPI aligns with our
Sustainability objective.
Ethnic diversity
in leadership
Carbon
emissions
1
Sustainable
issuers
London Stock Exchange Group plc
Annual Report 2024
22 London Stock Exchange Group plc
Annual Report 2024
22
Making more possible with Barclays
Over the past three years, LSEG and
Barclays have continued strengthening our
longstanding relationship. Driven by the
confidence and support between our two
organisations, Barclays is proud to use the
power of LSEG’s wide range of capabilities
to further enhance the workflows across
both our Investment Banking and Global
Markets businesses – which is critical in
helping us continue to deliver exceptional
client outcomes.
Stephen Dainton
President
Barclays Bank PLC
For customers like Barclays, our focus
is on making sure we are a true strategic
partner rather than just a vendor.
The key to our strong relationship
is mutual trust and ensuring we have open
channels for transparent and honest
communication, and the progression
of that relationship over the past two to
three years has been quite incredible.
Daniel Maguire
Head of LSEG Markets and CEO, LCH Group
Executive Committee sponsor for LSEG’s relationship with Barclays
23 London Stock Exchange Group plc
Annual Report 2024
Strategic Report
23 London Stock Exchange Group plc
Annual Report 2024
Strategic Report
Making more possible with Barclays continued
Building deep strategic partnerships
with our customers
The breadth of our business is a key competitive
differentiator. With products and services along the whole
trade lifecycle, across multiple asset classes and with
global reach, we are a natural partner to large banks and
asset managers. Increasingly for our largest customers,
we are building our partnerships around LSEG Data
Access agreements (LDAs). These multi-year agreements
give our customers access to a broad selection of our
products and services in a single contract, removing
barriers to consumption and providing more certainty
on cost. Typically, we see significant improvements in
customer engagement and satisfaction when we launch
relationships like this. On average, overall likelihood to
recommend
1
LSEG among LDA customers rises 10% in
the first 12 months after signing.
Cost avoidance and savings achieved by Barclays via an LDA with LSEG
c.$90m
Average incremental growth on an LSEG account after signing an LDA
>500bps
1 Based on the percentage of customers who are net promoters of LSEG 12 months
after signing an LDA (i.e., returned a score of 9 or 10 out of 10 when asked how likely
they would be to recommend LSEG).
2 Based on average incremental growth across accounts that have signed an LDA,
when compared with growth before the LDA was signed.
Supercharging our relationship with Barclays
In 2023, we signed an LDA with Barclays, building on
our longstanding relationship and including a wide range
of capabilities to support Barclays across their business.
Since signing the agreement, our partnership has moved
from strength to strength. We have enhanced the
workflow experience for many of Barclays’ private
banking and wealth users, and, more broadly, we
continue to drive adoption of solutions such as LSEG
AI alerts, a service that promotes relevant news and
significant developments on companies of interest
through Microsoft Teams, adapting to user interests
based on activity trends.
We have also integrated productivity tools into
Workspace, allowing Barclays users to seamlessly feed
our data and analytics into applications such as Microsoft
Excel and PowerPoint. Outside of workflows, we have
scaled up our data footprint with Barclays, delivering low
latency feeds from multiple global exchanges to their
traders and giving them access to query our vast historic
pricing database to back-test trading algorithms, tapping
into our data directly rather than having to store the
petabytes of data themselves. By helping Barclays scale
up their usage while displacing incumbent vendors to
streamline their data supply chain, we have supported
the delivery of significant cost savings for the customer.
In this case, we estimate that our relationship has helped
Barclays achieve c.$90 million in cost saves.
Delivering growth for LSEG
As well as delivering value for our customers, these
partnerships also generate attractive commercial results
for LSEG. We often find that these deals create a platform
for further value creation as we look for ways to build
on the initial partnership through cross-sell opportunities.
On average, we see over 500bps of incremental growth
on an account
2
after an LDA is implemented. In aggregate
across our offering, Barclays has now grown to become
one of our largest overall accounts in the EMEA region.
London Stock Exchange Group plc
Annual Report 2024
24
Our purpose
and strategy
Our purpose
LSEG is a key participant in the global
economy as a leading financial markets
infrastructure and data provider.
Our purpose is driving financial stability,
empowering economies and enabling
customers to create sustainable growth.
We drive financial stability
By operating businesses that are of systemic
importance, fundamental to the financial
ecosystems and critical to our customers.
We empower economies
By helping our customers to raise and allocate
capital, support employment, innovate and
access global financial networks, across multiple
asset classes.
We enable customers to create
sustainable growth
By providing the tools and data that enable
financial market participants to manage risk
and make informed investment decisions.
This purpose underpins everything we do
and sets the foundation for our strategy,
our operations and our culture.
25 London Stock Exchange Group plc
Annual Report 2024
Strategic Report
Our purpose and strategy continued
Our strategy
Our strategy is providing customers with
a global, multi-asset class financial markets
infrastructure and data ecosystem operating
across the trade lifecycle.
A number of aspects of our business
are strategically differentiating.
Trusted to deliver
services meeting
business-critical
needs
Our longstanding
heritage of playing
a vital role in global
financial markets
remains at the core
of what we do; our
customers trust and
rely on us to serve
critical needs.
Deep partnership
with our customers
Our level of relevance
to our customers
creates the
opportunity for strong
partnership. From
developing our
clearing houses to
now building new
products powered by
AI, we partner with
our customers to
transform industries.
Open
ecosystem
Interoperability is in
our DNA. When other
exchange groups
focused on vertical
integration of trading
and clearing, we
championed open
access – and stay
true to this philosophy
today with our market
infrastructure and
our data.
Global, multi-asset
class, across
the trade lifecycle
What was aspirational
prior to the acquisition
of Refinitiv is now
real and building
momentum. We serve
ever more of our
customers’ needs
pre-, at and
post-trade, across
asset classes and
geographies.
Integrated
solutions
Where it helps to
reduce friction in our
customers’ workflows,
we will now offer
them seamless
integration between
different elements of
our product offering.
Best-in-class
data machine
and distribution
To enhance our ability
to enrich our leading
data offering and
better monetise it,
we are investing in
our ‘data funnel’,
from content
ingestion through to
data management
and distribution –
accelerated by
our partnership
with Microsoft.
Trusted to deliver
services meeting
business-critical
needs
Integrated
solutions
Open
ecosystem
Best-in-class
data machine
and distribution
Deep
partnership with
our customers
Global, multi-asset
class, across the
trade lifecycle
London Stock Exchange Group plc
Annual Report 2024
26
Our purpose and strategy continued
Our strategy – looking forward
Trade lifecycle Serving customers pre-, at- and post- trade
Data value chain Serving Financial Services and new customer segments
As our business and the needs of our
customers evolve, we are increasingly
serving needs beyond the trade lifecycle.
Looking forward, our business will grow
to support customers across both the
trade lifecycle and the data value chain,
as these become increasingly intertwined.
We will bring our trusted heritage in financial
markets infrastructure and internal expertise in
data management to partner and grow with
our customers as their data needs expand.
Post-trade and
capital optimisation
Capital formation
and issuance
Pre-trade and
liquidity discovery
Trade
execution
Distribution
Data
sourcing
Data management
and transformation
Models and
analytics
27 London Stock Exchange Group plc
Annual Report 2024
Strategic Report
Executing on the transformation
Our progress in 2024
Delivery of Group Strategic Programmes (GSPs), including
modernising data distribution and network infrastructure
Our GSPs are a portfolio of initiatives to drive the transformation agenda,
with dedicated senior sponsorship, a strong focus on end-to-end
management of investments and enhanced visibility into progress.
For example, one GSP is focused on investing in our global core
network, increasing capacity in line with growth in demand for market
data and upgrading to a software-defined infrastructure. This will
improve overall resilience, remove dependencies on existing ageing
infrastructure and future-proof service for our customers, while also
driving operating efficiencies.
Progressing on cloud migrations, including within the
LSEG-Microsoft partnership
We are migrating applications to the cloud to enhance scalability
and improve resiliency: for example, this year we released Historical
Analytics via Snowflake, which provides customers access to
approximately 20 years of analytics in their preferred delivery
mechanism. We are also focused on ensuring resiliency in our
venues: for example, LCH Ltd has commenced migration of key
datasets and services to the cloud, such as Collateral Management.
Sales transformation
We have empowered our teams to effectively deliver a more integrated
offering, incentivising solution selling and increasingly focusing on
customer communities with our go-to-market approach. As we move
towards our target operating model, we are reallocating resource
to ensure that we are servicing customers appropriately and in line
with their scale. This has been supported through more self-service
and automation: for example, enhancement of our digital capabilities,
with initial sales completed through our self-service ecommerce
channel, and expansion of our central hub service model to support
>10,000 customers using a low-touch approach.
Delivering organisational and operational transformation of
Data & Analytics, FTSE Russell and Risk Intelligence
We have restructured our business divisions as we shift towards a more
product-led internal operating framework. This enables us to better
identify underlying trends in products and usage. Data & Analytics has
been organised into Workflows, Data & Feeds and Analytics; FTSE
Russell and Risk Intelligence (previously known as Customer & Third
Party Risk) now operate as stand-alone divisions, with heads of division
and dedicated leadership teams in place for both.
Ensuring cost and capital discipline
We have increased focus on prioritisation of capital investments to
enable divisions to continue to invest in our business while maintaining
capital discipline. We implemented a Zero-Based Budgeting approach
for the 2025 budgeting process, to provide a greater level of
transparency and support an increase in margin.
Our purpose and strategy continued
London Stock Exchange Group plc
Annual Report 2024
28
Our purpose and strategy continued
Monetising the integrated business Launching new products and creating
new markets
Continuing to unify and improve customer experience
We went live with Smart Clearing for ForexClear, part of our broad
FX offering. This uses Quantile’s portfolio optimisation tools to devise
more capital-efficient clearing solutions for customers, with five new
customers onboarded this year. Our collaboration with Tradeweb
continues to grow our Fixed Income footprint across the Group, with
initiatives including comprehensive distribution of Tradeweb data by
our Data & Feeds business and inclusion of Tradeweb’s benchmark
closing prices in FTSE’s global fixed income indices, including its
premiere World Government Bond Index.
Positioning Workspace as the integrated store front for
LSEG products
We continue to integrate LSEG’s leading content and workflows
with our flagship product LSEG Workspace, to offer our customers
a seamless end-to-end experience. For example, customers can now
access FXall, FTSE Russell indices and LCH data all through Workspace.
Progressing product development with Microsoft across Workflows,
Data & Feeds and Analytics
We are progressing our partnership with Microsoft in line with the
timetable we set out at our Capital Markets Day in 2023, including
the general availability of Financial Meeting Prep, interoperability
between MS Office and Workspace and DaaS at the end of 2024.
For more detail on our partnership with Microsoft, refer to pages 40–41.
Commercialising Post Trade Solutions, helping customers drive
down the cost of capital and trading
We are bringing together Quantile, Acadia, SwapAgent and TradeAgent
as an integrated business to support the OTC derivatives market. As
part of this we are growing our clearing house for bilateral derivatives,
SwapAgent, with 10 new members and new trade average daily volume
(ADV) up 39% versus prior year. We launched TradeAgent in March,
our solution to enable trade confirmation, cash flow calculation
and settlement services, with the first customer going live in July,
and we continue to build out key functionality.
Expanding our presence in private markets, both in data and
market infrastructure
We announced a multi-year strategic collaboration with Dun & Bradstreet
to broaden access to private market information, covering financial
information and ownership insights for millions of companies globally.
We continue to consult with a diverse range of market participants and
the UK Government to drive regulatory reform and innovation in private
markets with the UK’s proposed new regulated crossover market,
PISCES, expected to launch in 2025.
29 London Stock Exchange Group plc
Annual Report 2024
Strategic Report
Our purpose and strategy continued
Evolving priorities for 2025 and beyond
We continue to be well positioned to capitalise
on the strong underlying growth drivers of
our business.
We know what we need to deliver on in 2025
and beyond to realise our vision and strategy.
Modernising our platforms and processes
We are optimising our business to enable scalable growth and cost
reduction, and embedding a product-led operating model. We are
simplifying delivery and increasing speed-to-market for products –
for example, reducing time to market for the creation of new indices,
and sunsetting legacy systems and products to free up capacity,
including the upgrade of clients from Eikon to Workspace. We are also
decommissioning data centre equipment to address infrastructure
inefficiencies and reduce emissions – see page 21 for more detail
on our emissions objectives.
Delivering reliably and resiliently for the markets and our customers
We are driving risk awareness and management and improving
infrastructure and processes for long-term resilience and regulatory
compliance to enable safe and sustainable growth for the markets and
our customers. This includes progressively improving the maturity of
our business risk management and driving risk culture, plus a focus
on decreasing the number of risk events and timely closure of critical
risk issues.
Monetising our integrated business
Our goal is to deliver the best value possible to our customers by
offering our integrated products and solutions across the trade lifecycle
and data value chain. We are bringing together our multi-asset class
capabilities to offer customers a more connected experience and
shifting sales focus from individual products towards solution selling.
We are simplifying and joining up our commercial policies, and driving
growth through initiatives such as targeted retention campaigns and
accelerating cross-sell and upsell.
Launching new products and creating new markets
We are creating value through transformational opportunities. Delivery
of the 2025 LSEG-Microsoft partnership roadmap remains a key priority
and we are executing on our vision for Post Trade Solutions. We are
expanding our presence across the funding continuum, and building
asset-class agnostic, interoperable, digital market infrastructure to drive
efficiencies across the trade lifecycle.
Improving operating leverage
We are managing cost increases as we grow, with guidance that
our underlying EBITDA margin will increase over the medium term.
In 2025, we will drive realisation of efficiencies identified through
our Zero-Based Budgeting process and other operating efficiencies,
such as automation of content collection and ingestion across Data &
Analytics, FTSE Russell and Risk Intelligence. We are optimising staff
costs – our largest expense – for example, by reducing our reliance
on third-party contractors.
London Stock Exchange Group plc
Annual Report 2024
30 London Stock Exchange Group plc
Annual Report 2024
30
Making more possible with ICD
Acquiring ICD further diversifies
our customer and business
mix, advancing our track
record of expanding into
adjacent markets to improve
customer workflows.
Billy Hult
CEO
Tradeweb
The combined offering delivers
even more of what corporate
treasury wants, and together,
we are able to unlock the full
potential of our technology.
Tory Hazard
CEO
ICD
31 London Stock Exchange Group plc
Annual Report 2024
Strategic Report
31 London Stock Exchange Group plc
Annual Report 2024
Strategic Report
Making more possible with ICD continued
In August, Tradeweb completed the acquisition of
Institutional Cash Distributors LLC (ICD), an institutional
investment technology provider which leverages a
powerful, proprietary platform for corporate treasury
organisations trading short-term investments such as
money market funds. This transaction brings a number
of significant benefits to Tradeweb and its customers.
A fourth customer channel for Tradeweb
ICD brings a new and fast-growing customer channel
serving corporate treasury professionals, complementing
Tradeweb’s existing focus on institutional, wholesale and
retail clients. Established in 2003, ICD enables more than
500 corporate treasury organisations, from growth and
blue-chip companies across 65 industries and more
than 45 countries, to invest in money market funds
and other short-term products to manage liquidity.
Additional depth and scale in money
markets and rates
ICD is one of the largest US institutional money market
fund portals, and in 2023 had average daily balances of
more than $230 billion. The ICD Portal is a one-stop shop
to research, trade, analyse and report on investments
across more than 40 available investment providers,
primarily offering money market funds and access
to other short-term products including deposits,
fixed-term funds and separately managed accounts.
Significant cross-sell and growth opportunities
As part of Tradeweb, ICD provides a comprehensive
solution for corporate treasurers and asset managers
worldwide to manage short-term liquidity needs and
FX risk, and to optimise yield and duration via Tradeweb’s
existing suite of products. ICD clients retain the ability
to fully integrate their workflows with leading third-party
treasury management and accounting systems and
ICD’s portfolio analytics solution.
In addition to opportunities to cross-sell Tradeweb’s
products to ICD’s clients, Tradeweb is aiming to
accelerate ICD’s growth and expansion by leveraging
Tradeweb’s international presence and offering money
market funds to Tradeweb’s existing network of clients
globally. It also provides opportunities for other
businesses within LSEG, such as our FX platforms
and Risk Intelligence, to penetrate further into the
corporate market.
Average daily balances held on the ICD platform in 2023
>$230bn
London Stock Exchange Group plc
Annual Report 2024
32
We have made great strides in Data
& Analytics in 2024. We accelerated growth
through the year and made significant progress
in terms of product delivery, upgrading and
integrating key functionality in Workspace,
deepening our content – particularly in private
markets and news – and leveraging the cloud
to expand and enhance access to our highly
valuable market and pricing data.
We also launched our first few products
with Microsoft in 2024, with much more
in the pipeline, and we enter 2025 with
real momentum.
Divisional review
Data & Analytics
Following Satvinder Singh’s departure from LSEG in 2024, responsibility
for interim management of Data & Analytics (D&A) is jointly held by
Dean Berry (Head of Workflows, pictured right), Kamla Hatwar-Eckstein
(Chief Operating Officer, D&A, pictured left) and Prabha Viswanathan
(Head of Finance, D&A), with direct oversight from David Schwimmer.
Irfan Hussain (Group Chief Information Officer) continues as the
Executive Committee sponsor of the LSEG-Microsoft partnership.
A recruitment process for a new permanent Head of Data & Analytics
is under way and is making good progress.
We enable customers to draw crucial insights through data, feeds,
analytics, AI and workflow solutions. The quality, depth and integrity
of our data give our customers the confidence to make critical decisions,
identify opportunities and drive automation and efficiencies across
their operations.
Our Data & Analytics division is split into three areas, each addressing
different customer needs:
Workflows
User-facing end-to-end workflows across trading, banking, investment
management and wealth communities, providing access to an
open ecosystem of differentiated data, analytics and AI tools.
Structural market trends driving growth:
— Electronification of workflows and demand for customised solutions
— Adoption of Gen AI and cloud technology
— Increasing demand for higher-quality insight from data
Performance:
+2.9% with an acceleration in growth over the course of the year
reflecting the value of continued enhancements to Workspace, including
the expansion of our news and private markets content, and the
development of FXall and TORA capabilities in Workspace, allowing
for a more seamless end-to-end workflow for our customers. We saw
particularly good growth in the FX and Commodities communities,
which offset the impact of cancellations from Credit Suisse, following
their merger with UBS.
Data & Feeds
Serving the entire spectrum of business-critical data needs across asset
classes, latencies (the speed of data delivery) and delivery mechanisms,
including real-time data and news, text, reference and legal entity data.
Structural market trends driving growth:
— Rising importance of data trust across front, middle and back-office
applications and risk management use cases
— Increasing demand for higher-quality data to meet regulatory
requirements
— Customers outsourcing data management due to cost and complexity
Performance:
+6.2% reflecting the continued enhancement and expansion of our
content, as we added over 35 venues to our Real Time Direct offering,
alongside launching cloud-based distribution capabilities for Datascope
and full tick data in Real Time. Performance was partly impacted by
Credit Suisse cancellations in the year.
Analytics
Cross-asset models and analytics solutions for a diverse set of customer
needs, including risk, regulatory and historical analysis. Key products
include Yield Book fixed income analytics, StarMine sentiment analysis
and Lipper fund performance data.
Revenue split
Analytics
£220m 5%
Workflows
£1,910m 48%
Data & Feeds
£1,880m 47%
Revenue profile
1
Transactional
revenue 2%
Recurring
revenue 98%
Performance commentary growth rates are provided on an organic constant currency basis.
1 Data & Analytics recurring vs transactional revenue profile includes recoveries.
33
Strategic Report
London Stock Exchange Group plc
Annual Report 2024
Data & Analytics continued
Structural market trends driving growth:
— Adoption of Gen AI and cloud technology
— Increasing demand for higher-quality insight from data
Performance:
+4.9% primarily driven by the increased usage of Yieldbook’s fixed
income analytics and loan data. Our historical analytics were also
made available via Snowflake, giving customers additional flexibility
in generating analytics.
2024 highlights
LSEG Workspace moving from strength to strength
We have continued to make good progress with the rollout of
Workspace, our next-generation data and workflow solution that uses
the latest technology to deliver market-leading data, analytics, insights
and news. In line with our plans, we materially completed the rollout
in 2024 and will be permanently switching off the legacy product,
Eikon, in 2025. Workspace continues to receive positive feedback from
customers. Among our customers who use multiple desktop products
(LSEG + competitors), our data shows that the proportion of customers
who use Workspace as their primary platform has risen more than 10%
when compared with Eikon. We have also driven a 200bps acceleration
in organic growth in the Workflows business over the last three years,
partially through higher penetration of Workspace.
We are consistently enhancing the Workspace experience for our
customers. In 2024 alone, we launched over 500 updates to the
product. Key milestones included:
— Platform modernisation: Significant improvements in the stability
and performance of core Workspace apps, including Chart, News
and Monitor
— Expanded breadth of content: For example, trusted news from
Dow Jones’ newsrooms now available in Workspace, including
Barron’s, MarketWatch and The Wall Street Journal. For more
information, see page 16
— Integrated trade execution: Launched FX trading capabilities
via FXall, our leading multibank platform for foreign exchange
— Enhanced productivity: Added Macabacus workflow solutions
into Workspace, a leading provider of Microsoft 365 productivity
and brand compliance solutions
Partnering to expand our private market data coverage
In 2024, we announced a multi-year strategic collaboration with
Dun & Bradstreet to broaden access to private market information.
Dun & Bradstreet’s trusted private market data provides visibility
on firmographic data, officers and directors, ownership insights
and financial information for millions of companies globally and LSEG
Workspace users will be able to access this alongside our own capital
markets data, including deals, private equity, news and research.
The partnership helps to further establish Workspace as a valued
central data portal for our customers, and will enable investment and
capital market firms to drive better data-driven financial assessments
and decisions.
The industry-recognised Dun & Bradstreet D-U-N-S® Number, a unique
nine-digit identifier for over half a billion public and private companies,
will now be available to LSEG Workspace customers. Using the D-U-N-S
Number as the key to unlock data about a business, LSEG Workspace
users can now easily search for and download private company data
to improve mapping, discoverability and interoperability of content on
public and private companies globally.
The partnership is also supportive of our efforts to develop a new
private market data feed, which is expected to be available for
customers in 2025. Going forward, we will continue to work with Dun &
Bradstreet to explore additional use cases and distribution opportunities.
Driving consumption of our data through cloud delivery
Facilitating greater consumption of our data is absolutely core to our
strategy, and central to this is the expansion of our cloud distribution
capabilities. We made great strides in this direction in 2024, exemplified
by two particular product milestones:
Launched DataScope Warehouse via Snowflake
Our DataScope product provides customers with access to our
comprehensive Pricing and Reference database, including coverage
of fixed income, bank loans and legal entity data, as well as global
equities, derivatives and funds from more than 180 exchanges
worldwide. In September, we launched full cloud-based access to
this database. Known as DataScope Warehouse, this service will
initially be delivered via Snowflake cloud infrastructure, with more
cloud providers scheduled to be rolled out through 2025.
Delivered access to full tick market data in the public cloud
We also launched cloud distribution of our full tick Real Time offering,
meeting a need from compliance, risk and market surveillance teams
for comprehensive full tick data, but with the ease of cloud distribution.
Our full tick data solution delivers tick-by-tick pricing data on over
90 million instruments globally, and our customers can now choose
to receive this data via an on-premises location, or via public or
private cloud.
London Stock Exchange Group plc
Annual Report 2024
34
Divisional review
FTSE Russell
Our FTSE Russell offering comprises index and benchmark solutions
that enable customers to accurately measure performance and ensure
consistency in investment strategy and asset allocation decisions.
Structural market trends driving growth:
— Growth in passive investing
— Growing sophistication in fixed income indexing
— Multi-factor investing
Performance:
+10.9% reflecting strong subscription and asset-based revenue growth.
Subscription growth was driven by continued demand for our flagship
equity indices and benchmarks, complemented by commercialisation of
new products, including the Hong Kong Treasury Markets Association’s
interest rate and foreign exchange benchmarks (see below for more
information). Asset-based revenue growth reflected favourable
year-on-year market trends, particularly in US equities, and good
inflows driving record AUM levels.
2024 highlights
Leveraging our powerful data to enhance our fixed
income benchmarks
The strategic partnership between FTSE Russell and Tradeweb is
helping us leverage our high-quality data to enhance our fixed income
index offering. In June, we launched Tradeweb/FTSE US Treasury
Closing Prices, derived from executable pricing quotes collected
through the Tradeweb platform, mirroring the methodology that is
already in place for UK Gilts and European Government Bonds.
We have also now announced that we will include these benchmark
prices as part of FTSE Russell’s global fixed income indices, including
our flagship World Government Bond Index (WGBI). This will go live
in March 2025 and will ensure our indices continue to incorporate
transparent, representative datasets across the diverse universe
of fixed income markets that they track.
A trusted partner to global financial institutions
As a trusted global index provider, financial institutions look to partner
with us to add rigour to their product suite and to leverage our
strong brand and reputation. In 2024, the Treasury Markets Association
(TMA) in Hong Kong appointed FTSE Russell as the official licensing
entity for two of its interest rate benchmarks: CNH Hong Kong Interbank
Offered Rate (CNH HIBOR) and HKD Overnight Index Average (HONIA),
as well as two key spot FX benchmarks: USD/HKD Spot Rate and
USD/CNY(HK) Spot Rate. Since going live in June, early uptake has
been strong, with over 200 customers signed up across the four
benchmarks. The products are also available on our recently launched
ecommerce platform.
Partnering to promote sustainable investment
We have partnered with Phoenix Group to launch a bespoke Climate
Aware index series. The indices, which focus on both national and
regional markets, aim to protect policyholder portfolios against the
risk of climate change by reducing exposure to companies which
might face negative impacts for lacking well-developed plans on how
to successfully navigate the climate transition. The index series went
live in June with over £30 billion of initial seed capital allocated.
In recognition of our innovation in this area, we were awarded
Climate Index Provider of the Year in the 2024 Environmental
Finance Sustainable Investment Awards.
We are building on FTSE Russell’s strong
and diversified franchise, and continued to
accelerate growth in 2024. The business is
well positioned with strong structural tailwinds
providing multiple opportunities for growth
across a range of established and emerging
asset classes.
We are driving growth through partnership
with clients across the entire investment
community, building solutions that address
their critical needs and helping them
grow so that we can grow together.
Fiona Bassett
Head of FTSE Russell
Revenue split
Asset-based fees
£307m 33%
Subscriptions
£611m 67%
Revenue profile
Transactional
revenue 0%
Recurring
revenue 100%
Performance commentary growth rates are provided on an organic constant currency basis.
35 London Stock Exchange Group plc
Annual Report 2024
Strategic Report
Divisional review
Risk Intelligence
Our Risk Intelligence offering comprise solutions that help regulated
businesses and corporate organisations conduct due diligence,
meet Know Your Customer (KYC) and Know Your Third Party (KY3P)
commitments, and manage the risk of identity and payment fraud.
Structural market trends driving growth:
— Rising focus on reputational risk
— Digitalisation
— Regulation and ESG
— Digital currency growth
Performance:
+11.3% as we continue to see strong regulatory and risk-driven customer
demand for Anti Money-Laundering (AML) and Know Your Customer
(KYC) solutions in our screening business, World-Check. Our digital
identity and fraud business saw good volume growth and a strong
pipeline of product delivery including the launch of document and
biometric verification and global account verification services to defend
against fraud (see below for more information). Performance was
partially offset by continued weakness in our due diligence business.
2024 highlights
Helping customers fight fraud and protect against financial crime
with LSEG World-Check
As regulatory demands increase and new laws are introduced globally,
organisations face the burden of assessing, monitoring and disclosing
risk – all while having to remain competitive. Over 10,000 organisations
– including many of the world’s largest financial institutions, corporates
and government agencies – rely on our World-Check’s KYC database
to help them manage third-party relationships and make day-to-day
onboarding and monitoring decisions. World-Check’s comprehensive
coverage includes over five million records on sanctioned and politically
exposed entities and individuals in every inhabited country and territory
worldwide, and we apply strict quality control criteria to ensure ongoing
accuracy and relevance. In 2024, we updated over 1.1 million records
and created almost 500,000 new records, covering breaking events
throughout the year.
We are continuously innovating the product, and by hosting the data in
the cloud and recently launching API distribution capabilities, we have
allowed customers to more effectively incorporate World-Check into
their everyday screening processes. In 2024, we were proud to be
recognised as a leading innovator and service provider in the space,
with World-Check ranked as category leader for Name and Transaction
Screening Solutions and Adverse Media Monitoring Solutions by Chartis
Research, highlighting best-in-class capabilities for data methodology.
Innovating to tackle new and emerging risks
As technology evolves rapidly, it’s important that we partner closely
with our customers to understand new challenges they are facing and
that we adapt our offering appropriately. This year, we added two new
products to our Digital Identity & Fraud offering, designed to enhance
financial security for our customers:
— With payment fraud a growing problem for many companies and
£200 million lost by UK companies in the first half of 2024 alone,
1
our Global Account Verification (GAV) product will help customers
make payments with confidence, by verifying account information
and highlighting discrepancies in real time.
— As synthetic media such as deepfakes become increasingly
commonplace, our new Document and Biometric Verification (DBV)
leverages AI capabilities to confirm customer identities and prevent
fraud, calling on over 16,000 biometric data and government-issued
documents from over 220 countries.
It was an exciting year for Risk Intelligence as
we stood up one of LSEG’s fastest growing
businesses into its own division, demonstrating
the importance of our solutions in an
environment of complex and ever-changing
technology and regulation.
The popularity and reputation of World-Check
remain strong as ever, and we are constantly
innovating, leveraging AI to protect customers
from the threats of synthetic media and
to help them make digital payments
with confidence.
David Wilson
Head of Risk Intelligence
Revenue split
Risk Intelligence
£531m 100%
Performance commentary growth rates are provided on an organic constant currency basis.
1 Based on UK Finance Ltd’s Half-Year Fraud Report 2024.
Revenue profile
Transactional
revenue 23%
Recurring
revenue 77%
London Stock Exchange Group plc
Annual Report 2024
36
We delivered a strong performance this year in
our Capital Markets division. Our fixed income
platform, Tradeweb, outperformed a buoyant
market, making further share gains through
product innovation. We saw good growth in
our foreign exchange platforms and we also
welcomed significant UK capital markets
reform this year with the launch of the new
London Stock Exchange Main Market.
Looking ahead, we’re continuing to invest in
modernising and enhancing our platforms,
reflecting our ongoing commitment to deliver
truly world-class financial markets infrastructure.
Daniel Maguire
Head of LSEG Markets and CEO, LCH Group
Divisional review
Capital Markets
We offer our customers extensive access to capital markets and liquidity
across multiple asset classes. We operate a broad range of international
markets across equities, fixed income, exchange-traded funds and
products and foreign exchange. We are home to several capital
formation and execution venues: the London Stock Exchange, AIM,
Turquoise, FXall, Matching and Tradeweb. The division is split into
three areas:
Equities
Capital raising and trading on the London Stock Exchange, including
equity and debt capital markets. A trusted long-term partner to the
market and the number one exchange by capital raised in Europe.
Structural market trends driving growth:
— Globalisation
— Electronic trading
— Pipeline of private equity-backed businesses seeking next stage
of investment
Performance:
+4.6% driven by improving market conditions. In secondary trading,
average daily value traded was up 13.5% against the prior period.
Fixed Income, Derivatives & Other
Electronic marketplaces for rates, credit, equities and money markets
products, built and operated through Tradeweb.
Structural market trends driving growth:
— Electronification of fixed income markets
— Expanding global markets
Performance:
+23.1%, with an additional benefit of 5.3% from acquisitions in the
year. Average daily volume across all asset classes was $2.2 trillion,
a 55.8% increase on 2023, representing strong market activity across
Tradeweb’s global asset classes and share gains in credit. For a detailed
review of Tradeweb’s performance in 2024 – refer to page 37.
FX
A market leader in dealer-to-client and dealer-to-dealer FX trading,
we provide electronic trading, workflow and data to the institutional
foreign exchange community through FXall and FX Matching.
Structural market trends driving growth:
— Access to liquidity
— Cross-border trading and business globalisation
Performance:
+6.1% with both platforms, FXall, our dealer-to-client platform, and FX
Matching, our dealer-to-dealer platform, seeing growth in the year
from greater volumes driven by higher volatility in the market.
Revenue split
Foreign Exchange
£258m 14%
Equities
£236m 13%
Fixed Income,
Derivatives & Other
£1,334m 73%
Revenue profile
Transactional
revenue 72%
Recurring
revenue 28%
Performance commentary growth rates are provided on an organic constant currency basis.
37 London Stock Exchange Group plc
Annual Report 2024
Strategic Report
London Stock Exchange Group plc
Annual Report 2024
Capital Markets continued
2024 highlights
An outstanding year for Tradeweb
Tradeweb, our electronic marketplace business for fixed income
products, had an exceptional year, delivering 23.1% organic revenue
growth year-on-year and making continued share gains. Tradeweb
achieved record ADV across rates, credit and money markets in 2024,
and total ADV for the year of $2.2 trillion represented an increase of
36.6% vs the prior period, excluding the ICD acquisition.
Throughout the year, Tradeweb has worked closely with customers to
help them navigate a remarkable period of macroeconomic uncertainty
and rates volatility. However, organic expansion and continued
innovation have been central to ongoing strong performance and have
enabled Tradeweb to gain share in the fast-growing electronic fixed
income trading market. For example, adoption of Tradeweb’s Portfolio
Trading solution has been strong. Portfolio Trading gives a broad range
of customers the ability to put together a basket of bonds and trade
them all together as a single package deal, generating cost savings,
mitigating operational risk and reducing market slippage.
Tradeweb is also continuing to develop innovative new trading
protocols, such as RFQ Edge, an enhanced functionality for request-for-
quote (RFQ) trading in US credit markets, which provides customers
access to real-time trading data and analytics and customised charting
functionality. RFQ Edge calls upon other Tradeweb innovations
such as Tradeweb Ai-Price, which provides real-time prices for nearly
30,000 corporate bonds, to more accurately identify and compare
which bonds to trade. Notably, Tradeweb has also delivered strong
volume growth in credit – fully electronic US credit ADV rose 24.5%
in 2024 – where optionality across multiple pools of liquidity continues
to prove favourable with customers.
Recent acquisitions have also played an important part in Tradeweb’s
ongoing success. As well as closing the acquisition of r8fin in January
– a technology provider that specialises in algorithmic-based execution
for US Treasuries and interest rate futures – Tradeweb also completed
the acquisition of ICD in August. ICD is a leading multi-fund investment
platform for corporate treasury professionals, adding a fourth client
channel for Tradeweb alongside institutional, retail and wholesale and
presenting attractive cross-sell opportunities across LSEG. For more
information, see page 30.
Launching the new London Stock Exchange Main Market
This year, we celebrated a groundbreaking moment in the evolution
of the UK’s capital markets: the launch of the new London Stock
Exchange Main Market. After years of collaboration between HM
Treasury, the FCA, the London Stock Exchange and many more
industry stakeholders, the FCA announced a new set of Listing Rules,
representing the largest UK primary markets reform in a generation.
The new rules remove significant points of friction in the capital-raising
process, simplifying the listing eligibility requirements, taking a more
flexible approach to dual-class share structures and making it easier
for companies to execute M&A transactions by adjusting shareholder
approval requirements.
In our view, these reforms are key in ensuring that London remains
a highly competitive global destination to raise capital, reinforcing our
position as the largest exchange in Europe by capital raised and one
of the leading exchanges globally. Going forward, we continue to
support efforts to make the UK a leading destination for companies
and investors both directly and through bodies like the Capital Markets
Industry Taskforce (CMIT).
Driving strong capital-raising activity in fixed income
We continued to see strong growth in capital-raising activity across
the London Stock Exchange’s fixed income markets in 2024. A wide
range of global borrowers raised over £750 billion through more than
14,500 issues on our fixed income primary markets, an increase of 31%
by capital raised and 152% by number of issuances vs 2023, including
£57 billion through 143 transactions on the Sustainable Bond Market.
In the last two years, we have significantly increased the number of debt
and debt-like securities listed across the Main Market and International
Securities Market, up to over 24,000 as of January 2025.
London Stock Exchange Group plc
Annual Report 2024
38
We are continuing to build strong momentum
in Post Trade. In 2024, we once again
demonstrated our robustness as a critical
financial markets infrastructure provider,
partnering with customers to help them
manage risk as geopolitical and economic
uncertainty persisted.
As well as delivering another strong
performance in our core swaps franchise,
we are seeing very good traction across other
products and geographies, as we lay the
foundation for long-term growth.
Daniel Maguire
Head of LSEG Markets and CEO, LCH Group
Divisional review
Post Trade
We operate global, critically important clearing infrastructure, serving
customers in more than 60 countries and clearing across multiple asset
classes and in 27 currencies. We help customers optimise financial
resource consumption, satisfy their regulatory reporting obligations and
manage and optimise credit risk, while reducing operational complexity
and cost.
We are well positioned in the context of key structural market growth
trends: increasing regulation for our customers and rising demand
for both risk management and capital optimisation solutions. Market
volatility is also an important driver of performance, and recent
uncertainty around central bank activity has contributed to heightened
clearing volumes. We continue to drive strong underlying performance,
in part through the expansion of our global network, and we are
enhancing our product offering to secure long-term growth.
The division is split across four reporting segments:
OTC Derivatives
Clearing and capital optimisation solutions for OTC Derivatives,
including interest rate swaps, foreign exchange and credit default
swaps. The largest of these services is SwapClear, which is responsible
for over 90% of the interest rate swap notional cleared globally.
Performance:
+10.8% driven by greater clearing activity resulting from the higher
volatility stemming from the macroeconomic environment, and price
increases in SwapClear. ForexClear also performed well in the year,
with the service growing 12%.
Securities & Reporting
Securities clearing, capital optimisation and regulatory reporting solutions.
Performance:
-6.3% reflecting the impact of the termination of the Euronext clearing
agreement, with the last of the products – listed derivatives – migrating
in September 2024. For more information – refer to page 39.
Meanwhile, RepoClear continued to see good growth driven by
higher volumes.
Non-Cash Collateral
Fees are earned from handling non-cash collateral balances.
Performance:
+4.9% as clearing members optimised their collateral positions from
cash to non-cash.
Net Treasury Income (NTI)
Income earned on cash deposited with LCH as margin and default
funds as part of the risk management process.
Performance:
-6.3% as average cash collateral balances declined by 16.4%, reflecting
collateral optimisation by customers. This was partially offset by higher
treasury margins.
Revenue split
Non-cash Collateral
£111m 9%
Net Treasury Income
£266m 22%
OTC Derivatives
£582m 49%
Securities & Reporting
£235m 20%
Income profile
Transactional and
interest income
1
64%
Recurring
revenue 36%
Performance commentary growth rates are provided on an organic constant currency basis.
1 Transactional and interest income includes Net Treasury Income.
39 London Stock Exchange Group plc
Annual Report 2024
Strategic Report
London Stock Exchange Group plc
Annual Report 2024
Post Trade continued
2024 highlights
Increasing our ownership stake in LCH Group
We significantly increased our stake in LCH Group in 2024, reinforcing
our commitment to the business and further evidencing our confidence
in the growth outlook for our Post Trade division. In Q1, we increased
our stake by 3.2%, and in Q4 we acquired a further 8.3% for
consideration of €433 million, taking LSEG’s total share to 94.2%.
The purchase reinforces LSEG as a constructive controlling shareholder,
providing liquidity to our banking partners when required and
delivering assurance for customers who rely on LCH’s critical
clearing infrastructure.
Continuing to build out Post Trade Solutions
LCH remains a deeply trusted, multi-asset global clearing partner.
However, only 52% of the $18 trillion notional traded in OTC derivatives
markets in 2023 was cleared, with the remaining 48% traded bilaterally.
Deep inefficiencies persist in the bilateral OTC derivatives market, with
differing opinions on margin valuation, on what constitutes appropriate
collateral and on contract terms. There is a growing demand from our
customers for LSEG to help standardise this space and deliver similar
capital efficiencies to those currently available in the cleared market,
such as through trade compression.
With our Post Trade Solutions suite, we are answering this call and
almost doubling the market opportunity for Post Trade. In 2024,
we onboarded five banks to FX Smart Clearing, a service that helps
customers determine the most capital efficient strategy when
deciding which trades to clear. We also acquired Axoni’s reconciliation
management platform for equity swaps, Veris, expanding the
multi-asset coverage of our capabilities. We expect a gradual ramp-up
in usage of Post Trade Solutions over the next few years, supported
by an increasingly complex regulatory environment for our customers.
We are building a strong customer pipeline and are excited about the
next stage of development.
Ensuring market continuity during the migration of equity and
derivatives clearing services
As a provider of critical financial markets infrastructure, resilience is
a top priority for us and is key to delivering a reliable clearing service.
We pride ourselves on the fact that we have successfully managed
a number of significant market events with no service interruption for
our customers, including the default of Lehman Brothers in 2008,
as well as major deleveraging and liquidity stresses at the onset of the
Covid-19 pandemic. Following the 2021 divestment of Borsa Italiana to
Euronext as part of our acquisition of Refinitiv, Euronext subsequently
announced its intention to move its equity and listed derivatives clearing
activity in-house, away from LCH. Any error during a volume transition
of this magnitude and complexity could have resulted in significant
inconvenience and even financial cost to our customers. With the
final volumes having rolled off in Q3 2024, we are pleased to have
supported this migration in a manner that ensured total market
continuity at all times.
Laying the foundations for future growth
We continue to expand our presence across a range of new markets
and geographies, as we look to deliver our long-term growth strategy
in Post Trade:
— This year, we received regulatory approval to clear cash-settled
Bitcoin index futures and options contracts through our
DigitalAssetClear service, allowing customers to clear crypto
derivatives in a regulated environment and demonstrating our
commitment to bringing the benefits of clearing to this growing
asset class.
— We continue to build out our clearing presence in credit default swaps
(CDS), extending our existing footprint in the EU and establishing our
presence in the US with a growing network of members and clients.
— We are further expanding our presence in Asian markets, adding
more members in the region, as clearing activity there continues
to grow. In 2025, we will expand our eligible collateral to include
euro and dollar-denominated Chinese Government bonds.
— We are acting as clearing partner to FMX Futures, a new venue for
interest rate derivatives contracts. The exchange launched trading
for Secured Overnight Financing Rate (SOFR) futures in September,
with US treasury futures to follow in Q1 2025. By trading with FMX
and clearing with LCH, customers can access significant efficiency
benefits by cross-margining their positions across asset classes,
including with our SwapClear portfolio of swaps.
We were proud to receive the title of Clearing House of the Year at
the 2025 Risk awards. Informed by our members, this award recognises
our stability and resilience during a year of heightened market volatility
and geopolitical uncertainty. In addition, we continue to be recognised
by the industry for our innovation and quality of service. Our FX Smart
Clearing service won Collateral Management and Optimisation Product
of the Year, SwapClear’s Margin Calculator tool was awarded the
title of CCP Risk/Margin Product of the Year and our Regulatory
Reporting service was named Best Regulatory Reporting Solution
by WatersTechnology Asia.
London Stock Exchange Group plc
Annual Report 2024
40 London Stock Exchange Group plc
Annual Report 2024
40
Making more possible with Microsoft
Our partnership brings together
LSEG’s data and analytics with Microsoft’s
trusted cloud and AI solutions to build
next-generation services that empower
our customers to generate business
insights, automate complex processes
and analyse data faster than ever before.
Scott Guthrie
Executive Vice President, Cloud + AI Group, Microsoft
LSEG Board Member
Together with Microsoft, we’re innovating
at scale to transform how financial
organisations discover, deliver and manage
LSEG’s trusted data and analytics. With new
products like the recently launched
Financial Meeting Prep, we’re simplifying
workflows for our customers, delivering
powerful insight and enabling them to
enhance productivity.
Irfan Hussain
Chief Information Officer, LSEG
Executive Committee sponsor for the LSEG-Microsoft partnership
41 London Stock Exchange Group plc
Annual Report 2024
Strategic Report
41 London Stock Exchange Group plc
Annual Report 2024
Strategic Report
Making more possible with Microsoft continued
Shaping the future of financial services
Our strategic partnership with Microsoft underpins our
ambition to transform financial services by developing
next-generation data, analytics and cloud infrastructure
solutions. We are leveraging our significant breadth and
depth of trusted data and analytics with Microsoft’s cloud
and AI capabilities to deliver:
— Interoperable workflows across LSEG Workspace,
Microsoft Teams and 365 applications
— Enhanced data discovery through cloud delivery
and generative AI (Gen AI)
— Collaboration tools for the financial services community
We have been working closely with a number of our
global customers to inform our product development.
Known as the Design Partner Programme, this helps
us to ensure that the solutions we deliver to market
are meaningful and solve our customers’ needs.
Strong delivery to date
We have made significant progress over the last year,
hitting our product development milestones. Our key
achievements in 2024 include the following.
— Interoperability to enable data sharing from LSEG
Workspace in Microsoft Teams, and single sign-on
across Workspace and the Microsoft 365 suite
— This interoperability has facilitated the launch of
Financial Meeting Prep, an application that uses
Gen AI and data from LSEG Workspace to produce
insightful briefing reports for meetings
— Introduction of our Analytics API for Financial
Services which pulls together all LSEG Analytics
solutions into a single feed
— Migration of key datasets and other key technology
infrastructure into Microsoft Azure, launching the
first release of Data-as-a-Service (DaaS) with
ESG datasets via Microsoft Fabric
Key developments planned for 2025
In the coming year, LSEG Workspace Microsoft Teams
will be generally available, where customers can
access Open Directory – a fully compliant cross-firm
communications tool and collaboration network within
Microsoft Teams, enriched with LSEG’s data and analytics.
We will also continue to transform and personalise the
Workspace user experience using Gen AI-powered
navigation and data discovery, and we’ll be making more
datasets available via Microsoft Fabric. As we continue
the product rollout, we anticipate this partnership will
significantly streamline workflows and data discovery
for our customers, leading to deeper and faster insights
as well as valuable productivity gains.