(Updates with details on sale take-up, context of transaction)
LONDON, March 7 (Reuters) - An investor consortium
including Blackstone and Thomson Reuters , the
parent company of Reuters News, is selling 1.7 billion pounds
($2.01 billion) worth of shares in the London Stock Exchange
Group to trim its joint stake.
Investment banks managing the sale of 23 million LSEG
shares had orders for all the stock in the offering, according
to bookrunner messages seen by Reuters after close of markets on
Tuesday.
The transaction follows the publication of LSEG's 2022
earnings last week, which showed an increase in total income to
7.74 billion pounds from 6.54 billion pounds the year prior,
beating analysts expectations.
Separately, the bourse operator plans to buy back up to 750
million pounds of stock from the Blackstone-Thomson Reuters
consortium by April 2024.
U.S. technology giant Microsoft previously agreed
to purchase a 4% stake from the consortium as part of a wider
strategic partnership with LSEG in December.
Blackstone and Thomson Reuters have been shareholders in
LSEG since they sold financial data provider Refinitiv to the UK
group in 2021, in a landmark deal valued at $27 billion.
Following the latest stake sale, the consortium will not be
able to offload any further shares for a 90-day period,
according to a bank term sheet.
Barclays, Citi, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley are joint
global coordinators on the transaction, with Blackstone's own
capital markets unit acting as co-lead manager.
($1 = 0.8437 pounds)
(Reporting by Pablo Mayo Cerqueiro; Editing by Elisa Martinuzzi
and Howard Goller)
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