Blackstone, Thomson Reuters consortium sells $3.4 billion LSEG shares at discount

(Reuters) -An investor consortium including U.S. buyout firm Blackstone and Thomson Reuters sold 33 million shares in the London Stock Exchange Group worth about 2.7 billion pounds ($3.41 billion), a bookrunner said on Wednesday.

The placing of shares, which was upsized from 28 million, was at a price of 8,050 pence per share, a discount of about 5% to LSEG’s last closing price.

Shares in LSEG fell as much as 5.1% at 8038 pence in early trading.

The stock sale follows an earlier sale of more than $2 billion shares in March by Blackstone and Thomson Reuters, which became LSEG shareholders when they sold financial data firm Refinitiv to the bourse operator in 2021.

The balance of approximately 5.1 million voting ordinary shares owned indirectly by Blackstone and Thomson Reuters not sold in the Placing or the Retail Offer are subject to a 90 day lock-up,” said Barclays, one of the investment banks running the sale.

Thomson Reuters is the owner of Reuters News.

($1 = 0.7923 pounds)

(Reporting by Yadarisa Shabong in Bengaluru; Editing by Sonia Cheema)