LSEG agrees to buy credit data firm Octus for $3.535bn in its biggest deal since Refinitiv
The London Stock Exchange Group is paying cash for the New York-based private and distressed credit specialist, which expects more than $300m in revenue this year.
London Stock Exchange Group (LSEG) has agreed to acquire Octus, a provider of credit intelligence, data and workflow tools, for a cash consideration of $3.535 billion, the group announced on 22 October 2026. The sellers are funds advised by private equity firm Permira and Octus' management, including founder Kent Collier.
According to Reuters, it is LSEG's biggest acquisition since its 2019 deal for Refinitiv. The purchase pushes the London-listed group deeper into private credit, one of the fastest-growing corners of finance.
What LSEG is buying
Octus was founded in 2013 by Kent Collier and is headquartered in New York City. According to LSEG's announcement, it has more than 900 employees, 750 customers and over 40,000 individual users, including buy-side firms, investment banks, law firms and advisory firms.
Its specialism is the hard-to-reach end of the credit market: private, illiquid and distressed debt. Octus teams source credit documentation that is difficult to obtain, such as covenants and deal terms, and turn it into structured, searchable data. Customers reach that data through Octus' own platform, an MCP connector or AI workflows.
LSEG said Octus is expected to generate more than $300 million in revenue in 2026, with strong double-digit growth and an adjusted EBITDA margin of around 40 percent. It has grown revenue at a double-digit compound rate since 2022.
Why LSEG wants it
LSEG already has a large presence in liquid credit through IFR news, evaluated pricing, corporate actions and its Yield Book and LPC analytics businesses. Octus adds illiquid and private credit, and a strong customer base among hedge funds and alternative investment managers, where LSEG says it has historically been under-penetrated.
The group frames the deal as part of a wider fixed income strategy that also includes Tradeweb's planned acquisition of Trumid. LSEG cites an estimated $3.5 trillion private credit industry and says the market segment for private markets data, workflow and access solutions is currently worth $7–9 billion, with double-digit growth expected.
"Combining Octus' leading proprietary data and intelligence with LSEG's data and analytics business creates a powerful offering for our customers, and further accelerates our growth," LSEG chief executive David Schwimmer said in the announcement.
Collier will keep running the Octus businesses inside LSEG's Data & Analytics division, reporting to its co-heads Gianluca Biagini and Ron Lefferts. "Joining LSEG will pair our data, intelligence and workflows with global distribution and fixed income depth: a combination that provides tremendous opportunity for further growth and expansion," Collier said.
How the deal is financed
The acquisition will be financed by external debt. LSEG expects it to be neutral to adjusted earnings per share in the first full year after completion and accretive after that, and says it leaves its medium-term margin guidance unchanged.
The group still plans to complete its current £3 billion share buyback by February 2027 and says it has capacity for a further £1–1.5 billion of buybacks. It expects leverage to be around the upper end of its 1.5–2.5x target range at the end of 2027, before returning to the middle of the range by the end of 2028. The deal is expected to close in the first half of 2027, subject to regulatory approval.
Morgan Stanley is lead financial adviser and Barclays financial adviser to LSEG. Evercore and Goldman Sachs are advising Octus' shareholders.
Activist pressure and an upgraded outlook
Reuters noted that LSEG has been under pressure from activist investor Elliott, which disclosed a stake in the group in February. LSEG announced the deal alongside its third-quarter trading update, in which it raised its 2026 guidance for organic constant-currency revenue growth to at least 8 percent, from 7–8 percent, according to Proactive Investors. Proactive reports that brokers Jefferies and UBS both rate LSEG shares a buy after the update.
What it means for European founders and investors
For Europe's financial technology scene, the deal is a clear signal of where incumbents are spending. Private credit has grown into a multi-trillion-dollar market, but much of its information still sits in documents and data rooms rather than in clean datasets. Companies that can turn that material into structured, machine-readable data have become strategic assets for exchanges and data groups.
The price also matters as a benchmark. The headline figure is a little under 12 times the "over $300 million" revenue that LSEG expects Octus to generate in 2026, for a business with around 40 percent margins and double-digit growth. That gives a reference point for European data and analytics startups, and for the investors backing them, when they think about exit routes beyond an IPO.
It fits a wider pattern this week. On the same day, London-based Cognitive Credit raised $40m to scale its AI and data platform for credit markets. Founders building in credit data now have a very visible list of potential acquirers, and a London-listed group willing to pay for the right asset. For the broader funding picture, see our look at European tech funding in Q3 2026.
Spotted an error? Email mladen@europreneursmedia.com and we'll correct it. See our corrections policy and editorial standards.
