BX Blackstone Inc

By Elena Vardon

Goldman Sachs said a consortium including Blackstone and Thomson Reuters intends to monetize 43.1 million of the shares it holds in the London Stock Exchange Group through a placing, directed buyback and sale of call options.

The bank on Wednesday said the consortium sold a total of 25.5 million ordinary LSEG shares in a placing to institutional investors. This represents an around 4.6% economic interest in the stock-exchange and financial-information group, and 5.1% of voting interest in the company.

Goldman Sachs added that the LSEG notified York Entities of its intention to make an off-market purchase of around 750 million pounds ($3.37 billion) worth of limited-voting ordinary shares in parallel with the consortium's placing.

York Entities also intend to sell call options over around 7.9 million extra voting shares to Barclays Bank, Goldman Sachs, BofA Securities and Morgan Stanley. These represent an around 1.4% economic interest and a 1.6% voting interest in the company. They are also selling around 2.8 million additional voting shares to allow them to establish the initial hedge for the call option transaction through a concurrent placing to institutional investors.

The final number of placing shares and price for each one will be determined through an accelerated bookbuilding process to institutional investors, which will start immediately, it said.

LSEG shares closed up 106 pence, or 1.3%, at 8,264 pence on Wednesday.

Write to Elena Vardon at elena.vardon@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

September 06, 2023 12:46 ET (16:46 GMT)

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