Microsoft to buy a 4% stake in the London Stock Exchange Group under a deal to upgrade the FTSE owner's platform to its cloud

• Microsoft will buy an almost 4% stake in the London Stock Exchange Group, the financial services company said.
• The US tech giant has signed a 10-year partnership with the owner of the FTSE group of financial indexes.

Microsoft has agreed to buy an almost 4% stake in the London Stock Exchange Group, the company behind the FTSE 100 index and Refinitiv, as part of a 10-year partnership deal.

As part of the deal, the US tech giant will undertake projects such as migrating the LSEG's platform and other tech infrastructure to Microsoft's cloud, LSEG said in a statement Monday. The British company said it will spend at least $2.8 billion on cloud-related work by Microsoft over the life of the agreement.

"This strategic partnership is a significant milestone on LSEG's journey towards becoming the leading global financial markets infrastructure and data business and will transform the experience for our customers," LSEG CEO David Schwimmer said in the statement.

The LSEG, one of the world's biggest providers of financial markets infrastructure and financial data, is behind Refinitiv, the FTSE Group, and Italian stock exchange Borsa Italiana, among other companies. It has a market value of 42.6 billion pounds ($52.2 billion), according to Yahoo Finance.

Microsoft will acquire the LSEG shares from the Blackstone/Thompson Reuters Consortium, the company said.

Shares in LSEG rose 4.1% early Monday in London, while Microsoft stock futures were slightly lower, down 0.1% at $245.14 per share in premarket trading.