LSEG's $3.5B Octus Buy: Data the AI Chatbots Can't Scrape
Eleven-point-eight times revenue. That is the multiple the London Stock Exchange Group has just agreed to pay for a company whose crown jewels are loan documents you will never be allowed to see. On Thursday, LSEG announced it will buy Octus — the credit-intelligence firm that started life as Reorg — from private-equity owner Permira for $3.535 billion in cash, its biggest acquisition since the $27 billion Refinitiv deal in 2019. And the stated logic is blunt: this is data that AI cannot scrape. The timing is no accident. LSEG's share price has been ground down by roughly 28 per cent from its February 2025 peak on a single fear: that artificial intelligence will commoditise the financial-data business that now drives almost half the group's revenue. Activist investor Elliott disclosed a stake in February and has been pushing for portfolio changes. So chief executive David Schwimmer has answered the AI question with his chequebook — by buying the one kind of financial data t...