LSEG chief Schwimmer: IPOs to return 'when the environment stabilises'

By Vidya Ranganathan

SINGAPORE (Reuters) -LSEG Chief Executive Officer David Schwimmer said the market for Initial Public Offerings in London and elsewhere around the world should recover from current lows caused by concerns about rising interest rates and geopolitical and economic instability.

Britain's departure from the European Union has led to Amsterdam overtaking London as Europe's top share trading centre, and London's IPO market also faces more competition from the EU in international listings while rivalry with New York remains intense.

"IPOs will come back, when the environment stabilises and improves," Schwimmer told Reuters in an interview in Singapore.

Listings should recover even if the conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza drag on, Schwimmer said, as pent-up demand builds from companies needing capital to develop their businesses.

"Markets are very adaptable, if this is the new norm then markets will adjust to that and people will raise capital in that new norm," he said.

Market liquidity should improve thanks to proposed reforms that will allow British pension funds to invest in a broader range of assets, and which are supported by the country's both major parties, Schwimmer said.

That means the reforms should go through, even if the ruling Conservatives lose in next year's election a polls suggest.

"The reforms that the FCA is putting through, they're moving relatively quickly, but the markets move quickly too. I would love to see these kinds of changes be put through as quickly as possible, but these processes take time."

LSEG bought Refinitiv for $27 billion in early 2021, turning the exchange into a major market data company overnight to challenge rival Bloomberg.

Thomson Reuters the parent company of Reuters News, holds a minority stake in LSEG following the Refinitiv deal.

LSEG shares were flat around 8,538 pence. The stock is up more than 21% this year.

NEW PLATFORM 10 TIMES FASTER

A new foreign exchange trading platform with capabilities for non-deliverable forwards (NDFs) launching this year in Singapore will be "ten times faster", Schwimmer told Reuters.

LSEG unveiled the plan for NDF Matching, a new fully cleared matching venue for these emerging market currency derivatives, last year.

The data and analytics unit is LSEG's largest division that makes up about 70% of its revenue and includes its flagship Workspace product, which provides financial and real-time data and news, including exclusive access to Reuters News.

Investors in the group now look to LSEG's capital markets event on Nov. 16 and Nov. 17, when it will present a new strategic plan and provide new targets.

As part of a partnership with Microsoft, LSEG will make its data and analytics available through Microsoft Teams and has agreed to a minimum cloud-related spend over the term of the partnership.

Schwimmer said the roll0out of the new partnership product in 2024 will make it easy for customers to use LSEG data in a cloud environment. "We're building some new capabilities that don't exist today, such as modelling as a service or analytics as a service... almost like an App store for models."

(Reporting by Vidya Ranganathan in Singapore and Lawrence White in London; Editing by Sharon Singleton and Tomasz Janowski)