London Stock Exchange Group (LSEG) News Today – 24 November 2025: Fresh Buyback, Senior Hire and 43% Upside Call

London Stock Exchange Group plc (LON: LSEG) enters the new week with a busy news flow: a fresh “Transaction in Own Shares” announcement under its £2.5bn buyback plans, a high‑profile senior hire, and new research highlighting heavy institutional ownership and potential upside of more than 40% in the shares. ^[1]

LSEG share price today and recent performance

At the close of trading on Friday 21 November 2025, London Stock Exchange Group shares finished at 8,602p, up about 3.3% on the day, with roughly 1.8 million shares changing hands. Over the past 12 months the stock is still down around 22%, underscoring how far it has fallen from its 52‑week high above 12,000p. ^[2]

Intraday data for Monday 24 November show LSEG trading in the mid‑8,700p range, with a day range between roughly 8,642p and 8,800p, according to Google Finance and U.K. broker quotes. ^[3]

Key valuation markers from Morningstar place LSEG on a normalised P/E of around 18–19x, a price‑to‑sales ratio of about 5x and a trailing dividend yield of roughly 1.6%, suggesting a quality, cash‑generative business that is not obviously cheap but has already de‑rated versus recent years. ^[4]

Fresh buyback disclosure: 115,000 shares repurchased

The headline corporate news for 24 November 2025 is another update in LSEG’s ongoing share repurchase campaign.

A regulatory announcement carried by Mondo Visione confirms that on 21 November 2025 the group bought back 115,000 ordinary shares from Citigroup Global Markets under its existing buyback programme, with: ^[5]

Lowest price paid: 8,336.00p
Highest price paid: 8,698.00p
Volume‑weighted average price: 8,565.73p

LSEG intends to cancel all of the purchased shares, reducing the free‑float over time. After these latest transactions, the company reports: ^[6]

514,249,625 ordinary shares in issue (excluding treasury)
24,051,599 shares held in treasury
514,249,625 total voting rights

This daily disclosure sits within a much larger capital‑return story. In its Q3 2025 trading update, LSEG said it had: ^[7]

Completed a £500m buyback in H1
Accelerated a further £1bn buyback announced on 31 July 2025, with £938m of that already executed by 22 October (10.5m shares repurchased at an average price of £88.95)
Committed to an additional £1bn of repurchases by February 2026, taking total buybacks to about £2.5bn over the 12 months from March 2025

For shareholders, the latest 115,000‑share purchase is another small but tangible reduction in share count, supporting earnings per share and signalling management’s continued confidence in the long‑term value of the business.

Strong Q3 fundamentals and raised margin guidance

The buyback is backed by robust fundamentals rather than financial engineering alone. In the Q3 2025 trading update, LSEG reported: ^[8]

Total income (excluding recoveries) up 6.4% on an organic constant‑currency basis
Data & Analytics revenue up 4.9%, driven by demand for real‑time data, analytics APIs and machine‑readable news for AI use cases
FTSE Russell income up 9.3%, with asset‑based revenues up more than 18% on the back of inflows and market strength
Risk Intelligence up 13.9%, reflecting strong demand for screening and identity verification products such as World‑Check On Demand and World‑Check Verify
Markets division income up 6.3% organically, despite tough comparatives

Crucially, the group raised its 2025 EBITDA margin guidance, now expecting around 100bps of margin expansion on a constant‑currency basis, with a further ~100bps uplift from changes to its SwapClear revenue‑sharing arrangements. Management reiterated targets for: ^[9]

6.5–7.5% organic income growth (ex‑recoveries)
Capex at roughly 10% of income
Equity free cash flow of at least £2.4bn

Together with the buyback, this underscores a capital‑light, high‑margin data and infrastructure model that can return substantial cash to shareholders while continuing to invest in growth and AI initiatives.

Ownership: 76% of LSEG sits in institutional hands

A new Simply Wall St article published today highlights just how tightly held LSEG is by professional investors. According to their analysis: ^[10]

Around 76% of LSEG’s share capital is owned by institutions
The top 22 investors control roughly 50% of the company
The largest disclosed holders include BlackRock (~8.1%), Qatar Holding (~6.1%) and Vanguard (~5.0%)
Insiders collectively own under 1% of the stock (about £15m worth)
The general public — mainly retail investors — holds roughly 13%
Private equity funds own about 6.1%, and other public companies around 4.1%

High institutional ownership cuts both ways. It gives LSEG a solid base of long‑term investors and helps explain why the company sits at the heart of many portfolios. But it also means the stock can move sharply if big funds rotate out, particularly against the backdrop of record outflows from U.K. equities reported by the Financial Times this month. ^[11]

Bullish analyst outlook: around 43% upside to consensus targets

Fresh analysis on Directorstalk this morning frames LSEG as a “compelling growth narrative” with substantial upside from current levels. Drawing on data from a large analyst sample, the piece highlights: ^[12]

A current trading price of 8,602p used as the reference point
An average analyst target price of about 12,300p, within a range roughly 11,000p–13,790p
This implies potential upside of approximately 42.9% from the reference price
15–18 analysts covering the stock, with a heavily skewed “Buy” consensus and only a single “Hold” and no “Sell” recommendations on LSEG’s own consensus page

The same dataset suggests: ^[13]

Revenue growth around 6–7%, broadly in line with company guidance
Return on equity of just over 5%, reflecting both the capital intensity of market infrastructure and ongoing investment
Free cash flow in excess of £2.5bn, comfortably covering the dividend and buybacks
A dividend yield near 1.6% with a payout ratio of around 70% of earnings

In other words, most covering analysts still see LSEG as a high‑quality compounder whose share price has de‑rated faster than its fundamentals.

Senior hire: Stephen Grady joins LSEG in a community growth role

Governance and talent are also in focus today. The TRADE reports that industry veteran Stephen Grady has joined LSEG as Head of Open Directory – Community Engagement and Growth. ^[14]

According to the report, Grady: ^[15]

Has more than three decades of markets experience across buy‑ and sell‑side roles
Previously served as global head of trading at Legal & General Investment Management, and later held senior positions at Barclays Wealth, Fortis Investments, Lombard Odier and others
Was recognised with The TRADE’s Lifetime Achievement Award in 2024, reflecting his long‑standing influence on buy‑side trading
Most recently worked as a strategy consultant at Tradeweb before joining LSEG

The creation of a role focused on “open directory” and community growth fits with LSEG’s broader LSEG Everywhere strategy — embedding its data and tools more deeply into partner ecosystems and workflows. ^[16]

AI and data: LSEG leans further into generative AI

Today’s news also sits against a backdrop of deepening AI partnerships that have been building through 2025.

In October 2025, LSEG announced a collaboration with Anthropic to give users of its Claude AI models access to data licensed through LSEG’s Workspace and Financial Analytics products. The integration is designed to let financial institutions automate tasks such as summarising earnings calls, scanning due‑diligence materials and triggering agentic workflows using LSEG’s “trusted data”. ^[17]

Separately, a detailed AWS blog published in September describes how LSEG has developed an AI‑powered “Surveillance Guide” using Amazon Bedrock and Anthropic’s Claude Sonnet 3.5 model to classify whether Regulatory News Service (RNS) announcements are likely to be price‑sensitive. In tests on a curated dataset of around 110 articles, the system achieved: ^[18]

100% precision when flagging non‑price‑sensitive news
100% recall for articles classified as potentially price‑sensitive or hard‑to‑determine
Significant reductions in manual review time and more consistent triage for potential market‑abuse cases

Together with the Q3 commentary about integrating LSEG data into Microsoft 365 Copilot, Databricks and other workflow tools, these initiatives reinforce the group’s positioning as an AI‑enabled data and infrastructure provider, not just a traditional stock exchange. ^[19]

How today’s LSEG news fits together

Putting today’s developments into context:

Capital returns remain aggressive. With another 115,000 shares bought back on 21 November and plans for £2.5bn of repurchases over a 12‑month period, LSEG is actively shrinking its share base at a time when the stock is trading well below last year’s highs. ^[20]
Fundamentals look resilient. Q3 showed mid‑single‑digit to high‑single‑digit income growth across most divisions and raised margin guidance, all while funding heavy investment in AI and digital infrastructure. ^[21]
Ownership is concentrated in big institutions. With three‑quarters of the register in institutional hands, price moves are highly sensitive to professional flows rather than retail sentiment. ^[22]
The Street is still bullish. Consensus target prices cluster around 12,000–12,500p, implying around 40–45% upside from the low‑8,000s, even after factoring in the recent rally. ^[23]
Strategic execution is centred on data and AI. Ongoing collaborations with Anthropic, Microsoft and AWS, plus internally developed tools like Surveillance Guide, aim to deepen LSEG’s moat as a data and analytics powerhouse. ^[24]

For investors, the narrative on 24 November 2025 is of a high‑quality infrastructure and data business that has been de‑rated along with wider U.K. equities, but which is still growing, aggressively returning cash and investing heavily in AI‑driven capabilities.

Key facts about London Stock Exchange Group (as of late November 2025)

Ticker: LON: LSEG
Sector: Financial markets infrastructure & data
Market cap: c. £40–45bn (varies with FX and share price) ^[25]
Latest close (21 Nov 2025): 8,602p, up 3.27% on the day ^[26]
52‑week range: roughly 8,094p – 12,185p ^[27]
1‑year share price change: about –22% ^[28]
Dividend yield: ~1.6% trailing; similar on a forward basis ^[29]
Ownership: ~76% institutional; top holders include BlackRock, Qatar Holding and Vanguard ^[30]
2025 guidance: 6.5–7.5% organic income growth; c.100bps EBITDA margin expansion plus an additional 100bps from SwapClear changes; equity FCF ≥ £2.4bn ^[31]

Important note

This article is a journalistic summary of publicly available information as of 24 November 2025. It is not investment advice or a recommendation to buy or sell London Stock Exchange Group plc shares. Readers should conduct their own research and, where appropriate, consult a qualified financial adviser before making investment decisions.