Abu Dhabi is in talks to buy the 20 percent stake in the London Stock Exchange (LSE) owned by neighboring Dubai in a deal valued at $1.5bn, it has been reported.
Abu Dhabi is in talks to buy the 20 percent stake in the London Stock Exchange (LSE) owned by neighboring Dubai in a deal valued at $1.5bn, it has been reported.
The proposed deal would see a merger of the Abu Dhabi Securities Exchange with the Dubai International Financial Centre and Bursa Dubai, which owns the stake, said the Sunday Times, without identifying the source of the information.
The stake would form part of a wider buyout of Dubai’s financial assets, the report said.
A spokesperson for Bursa Dubai was not immediately available to comment.
A spokesperson for the London Stock Exchange declined to comment.
Bursa Dubai, which controls Dubai’s two stock exchanges, paid about $4bn for a stake in Nasdaq OMX and 20 percent of the LSE, as part of a 2007 deal that saw Nasdaq merge with Sweden's OMX group.
The company last week sold shares in Nasdaq OMX Group to help pay $1.1bn of a $2.45bn term-loan ahead of schedule. It raised $497m from the sale of 22.78 million shares to Nasdaq and sold a further eight million Nasdaq shares to Investor AB, the holding company for Sweden's Wallenberg family.
It is thought the deal raised about $175m.
Bursa Dubai has around $827m of debt maturing in February 2011 and the company said it would use the proceeds from the Nasdaq share sales to meet these obligations.
The state-owned Qatar Investment Authority holds a 15 percent stake in LSE.
Source: arabianbusiness.com
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