CPPIB member of consortium to offload shares in London Stock Exchange Group

financialpost.com:

A consortium of investors including Blackstone Inc. and Thomson Reuters Corp. raised about £2 billion ($3.4 billion) by offloading shares in London Stock Exchange Group PLC (LSEG) via an overnight placing.

The group, which also includes Canada Pension Plan Investment Board and Singaporean sovereign wealth fund GIC, sold 25.5 million shares at £79.50 apiece, according to a statement Sept. 7. The price represents a 3.8 per cent discount to the exchange operator’s previous close.

The selling consortium is made up of the former owners of Refinitiv, a data services firm that LSEG acquired for US$27 billion in 2021. The group has spent much of the year selling large chunks of shares in the exchange operator. In March, they announced the sale of about £2 billion of the shares and in May, they kicked off a process to sell about £2.7 billion.

The consortium also put call options in place over about 8.2 million shares, which would allow them to cut more LSEG stake down the line. An additional 2.7 million LSEG shares were placed in the latest offering as a hedge to the call options put in place by the sellers. Including this block, the share sale raised about £2.2 billion.

Separately, LSEG made an off-market purchase of 9.5 million shares worth about £750 million. The Blackstone consortium’s economic interest in LSEG has fallen to around 12 per cent after the latest sales, down from about 19 per cent, according to Bloomberg calculations. That number could drop to 11 per cent if the call options are exercised.

The selldown comes at a time when the exchange is grappling with an exodus of companies, and a sharp decline in local listings due to the lure of deeper capital pools in the U.S. and a persistent valuation discount for British