London Stock Exchange to acquire Borsa Italiana

06/23/07 - newratings.com

LONDON, June 23 (newratings.com) – The London Stock Exchange (LSE) Saturday announced that it had reached an agreement to buy its Italian counterpart for €1.6 billion.

The two exchanges mentioned that the merged entity will represent 48% of the FTSE Eurofirst 100 index of companies by market value. The LSE mentioned that the deal was expected to be earnings neutral to positive in the financial year 2008 and earnings accretive by at least 10% in the financial year 2009. As per the terms of the deal, shareholders in the Italian bourse will get 4.9 LSE shares for every share held by them. The merged entity will be headed by the current LSE Chief Executive Clara Furse, while Borsa Italiana’s CEO Massimo Capuano will takeover as the deputy CEO.