The London Stock Exchange Group (LSEG) tapped Microsoft to architect its data infrastructure and develop new cloud data and analytics services that build upon the group's acquisition of financial market data and infrastructure provider Refinitv. The deal also includes Microsoft gaining an equity interest in LSEG.

LSEG CEO David Schwimmer said the Microsoft partnership "is a significant milestone on LSEG’s journey toward becoming the leading global financial markets infrastructure and data business and will transform the experience for our customers."

The U.K. group will migrate its Workspace technology infrastructure and data and analytics platform to Microsoft Azure. In return, the hyperscale cloud provider will receive a 4% equity stake in LSEG. The companies plan to build cloud-based analytics services that shift how market participants interact with capital markets within a variety of asset classes.

This move marks a "step-change" for LSEG's Workspace platform, which aims to improve finance and investment professionals' communication, productivity, and regulatory compliance through an "intuitive," connected interface, according to the group. The platform will allow customers to communicate with others inside or outside of their organization; create financial models, run data analysis, and create graphs; and easily work between the group's platform and Microsoft services to, for example, present financial reports.

LSEG plans to use Microsoft Azure Purview and Azure Synapse tools to build cloud-based data architecture that compresses its datasets into flexible, responsive, efficient infrastructure created with privacy, compliance, and security in mind. "Bringing together our leading data sets, analytics, and global customer base with Microsoft’s comprehensive and trusted cloud services and global reach creates attractive revenue growth opportunities for both companies," Schwimmer added.

As capital markets evolve, this cloud architecture will allow data scientists, engineers, and the group's customers to quickly access data from anywhere and utilize its "open financial data ecosystem" to develop other unique solutions. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella agreed cloud innovation "will fundamentally transform how financial institutions research, interact, and transact across asset classes, and adapt to changing market conditions."