by Huw Jones
LONDON, March 3 (Reuters) – The London Stock Exchange Group, the operator of the London Stock Exchange, said on Thursday that the application of financial sanctions aimed at Russia after the invasion of Ukraine would only have a limited impact on its activities, despite the suspension of the listing of several Russian securities.
The British group made this statement after the publication of preliminary annual results marked by cost control and welcomed by a 4.93% rise in its share price.
Its chief executive, David Schwimmer, said LSE halted the listing of 28 Russian companies on Thursday, including oil giant Rosneft, gas giant Gazprom and Russia’s largest bank, Sberbank.
Russian companies included in the composition of the indices managed by the subsidiary FTSE Russell will be excluded, he added.
LSE Group said it employs 150 people in Moscow and nine in Ukraine in activities that represent less than 1% of its overall turnover of 6.8 billion pounds sterling (8.2 billion euros).
The group, which bought the financial data and analysis company Refinitiv in January 2020 for 27 billion dollars (24.3 billion euros), says in its press release that the savings linked to this acquisition are realized more faster than expected since they reached 151 million pounds in 2021 against a target of 88 million.
For 2022 and 2023, the group confirms that it forecasts an increase in its costs “in the low single-digit range”.
Last year it made an adjusted profit of 1.82 billion pounds, up 44.6%.
(Report Huw Jones, French version Marc Angrand)
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