BRUSSELS: EU regulators on Wednesday authorised the London Stock Exchange's $27-billion (22-billion-euro) takeover of US financial data provider Refinitiv with certain conditions.
The transaction is permitted on condition that the parties involved make "commitments that will ensure that the markets will remain open and competitive," European Union antitrust commissioner Margrethe Vestager said in a statement.
The merger, announced in August 2019, aims to create a market information giant that would rival Bloomberg.
New York-headquartered Refinitiv is one of the main financial markets data providers, with 40,000 institutional clients in almost all countries on the planet.
It was formerly the financial and risk business of Canadian group Thomson Reuters, which shared ownership with the majority stakeholder, private equity firm Blackstone.
The deal will see the Thomson Reuter-Blackstone consortium take 37 percent in the London Stock Exchange Group (LSEG) but hold less than 30 percent of voting rights. The LSEG forecasts it will triple revenues after the merger and become one of the world's top players across a range of financial services, including trading in shares and bonds as well as clearing and data.
US authorities have already approved the merger.
To win EU regulatory approval, the LSEG agreed to divest itself of Borsa Italiana, the Italian stock exchange, and for 10 years to continue offering over-the-counter interest rate derivative clearing services on an "open access basis" and supply London Stock Exchange trading data to competitors, the statement said.
"The Commission therefore concluded that the transaction, as modified by the commitments, would no longer raise competition concerns. This decision is conditional on full compliance with the commitments," it said.
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