By Michael Susin

Goldman Sachs said a consortium including Blackstone and Thomson Reuters has cashed in 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 Thursday said the York Entities consortium has also sold 25.5 million ordinary LSEG shares at 7,950 pence a share--worth a total of 2.02 billion pounds ($2.53 billion) in a placing to institutional investors. This represents a 3.8% discount to Thursday's closing price of 8,264 pence prior to the announcement.

In a separate statement, the LSEG said it conducted an off-market purchase of nearly 750 million pounds ($938 million) worth of limited-voting ordinary shares in parallel with the consortium's placing at a price of 7,894 pence a share. This represents a discount of 4.5% to Thursday's closing price.

York Entities has sold call options over around 8.2 million extra voting shares to Barclays Bank, Goldman Sachs, BofA Securities and Morgan Stanley. These represent an around 1.5% economic interest and a 1.6% voting interest in the company. They are also selling around 2.7 million additional voting shares to allow them to establish the initial hedge for the call option transaction through a concurrent placing to institutional investors.

Shares in LSEG at 0702 GMT were down 184 pence, or 2.2%, at 8,080 pence.

Dow Jones competes with Thomson Reuters in financial news and information services.

Write to Michael Susin at michael.susin@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

September 07, 2023 03:32 ET (07:32 GMT)

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