London Stock Exchange
No matter what trauma was occasioned by the failure of the proposed merger with Deutsche Börse, and no matter how it has derailed the retirement plans of Xavier Rolet, the chief executive, the LSE seems to be doing rather well on its own. The first-quarter figures seem to confirm some suspicions that the merger was rather more advantageous to the Germans than to London, with revenue growth across the group up by 8 per cent in real terms.
The LSE chose to hand back £200 million to investors when the merger failed last month by means of a share buyback, which is supposed to stand in the stead of the proposed special dividend they would have received had the deal gone through.