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Microsoft buys near 4% stake in London Stock Exchange

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Re: Microsoft buys near 4% stake in London Stock Exchange

#21
post #2

Can someone please explain to me how can a company by stake in a stock exchange ? How can an exchange even have stocks for sell? How do they profit? What will MS gain from it?

The bulk of your question has already been answered but this one remains:

> What will MS gain from it?

I think this is an interesting question. It has been a minute since I worked in this field so my info may be out of date.

My understanding is the LSE runs on MelliniumIT's trading Engine and this is UNIX based?

One would think MS is looking for a way to market its cloud. "LSE runs on Azure and you should too" but in the case of the most valuable component (the matching engine) - I believe it runs on something like RedHat?

So perhaps MSs spin will be "we love Redhat as well and LSE runs on our RHEL servers?"

Re: Microsoft buys near 4% stake in London Stock Exchange

#22
post #2

Can someone please explain to me how can a company by stake in a stock exchange ? How can an exchange even have stocks for sell? How do they profit? What will MS gain from it?

Most exchanges are public companies and they do much more than provide a simple marketplace for investors. Exchanges used to be owned by their customers but many of them “de-mutualized” years ago.

LSEG, ICE, NASDAQ also have major data and software businesses that generate significant revenues.

Re: Microsoft buys near 4% stake in London Stock Exchange

#23
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i think the NASDAQ AWS agreement was to only move data products like historic data and maybe research clusters to the cloud. I think the exchange itself is still going to be running in the usual location.

NASDAQ has moved the matching engine to AWS Outposts https://www.nasdaq.com/press-release/nasdaq-completes-migrat...

I cannot help but think this is going to end up being a huge shitshow.

I hate AWS with a passion.

Re: Microsoft buys near 4% stake in London Stock Exchange

#24
post #2

Can someone please explain to me how can a company by stake in a stock exchange ? How can an exchange even have stocks for sell? How do they profit? What will MS gain from it?

Would it be so weird if Microsoft bought a % of eBay? Or Coinbase? Tip for understanding finance: replace every occurrence of “share”, “instrument” and “security” with “apples”

No post body was provided.

Re: Microsoft buys near 4% stake in London Stock Exchange

#25
post #8

The question is not how and what but why? Is the RoI of IT even lower than London exchange ?

The IT business has been a bit shaky lately, so diversification makes at least some sense. Although the bigger question is why LSE, and why now? I'd imagine London to be waning as a financial center post brexit, especially given the Russian situation.

Before Brexit the LSE stood to lose a ton of value from Brexit.

After Brexit the LSE stands to gain a ton of value from its eventual reversal.

Re: Microsoft buys near 4% stake in London Stock Exchange

#26
post #2

Can someone please explain to me how can a company by stake in a stock exchange ? How can an exchange even have stocks for sell? How do they profit? What will MS gain from it?

The bulk of your question has already been answered but this one remains: > What will MS gain from it? I think this is an interesting question. It has been a minute since I worked in this field so my info may be out of date. My understanding is the LSE runs on MelliniumIT's trading Engine and this is UNIX based? One would think MS is looking for a way to market its cloud. "LSE runs on Azure and you should too" but in…

Microsoft's gain here is that they hurt their competitors, and they have demonstrated that they are willing to spend virtually unlimited sums of money to do that in certain cases.

When MS bought HoTMaiL, it was running on Unix. So, MS forced them to switch to Windows. And the service failed. So MS doubled the number of computers to throw at the problem, and forced them again. And failed again. And MS doubled the number of computers to through at the problem again, and finally HoTMaiL was now a turd but it wasn't completely totally dead.

Which meant that MS won and Unix lost. It didn't matter how much it cost or who they hurt in the process, they made that dog talk.

Same shit, different year.

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