Dean Berry
A year ago, I was “cautiously optimistic” about financial markets and deal activity in 2024 – and looking back, I can say that we indeed observed a recovery in many asset classes, activities and markets.
Our deals intelligence data shows that worldwide M&A volumes are up 10% year-on-year and are now at a 2-year high. Whilst the number of deals has gone down, we have seen an increase in “mega-deals”, with the recovery led by the US and Europe. Asia Pacific volumes (with the exception of Japan) have yet to recover.
Following a year of elections, inflationary pressures have eased across developed markets while G7 central banks have shifted focus from inflation to growth. The Bank of England, the ECB and the Fed all cut rates for the first time since 2020.
While there are still lingering risks such as geopolitical risks and conflicts, interest rate volatility, regulation and protectionism, I remain optimistic on the outlook for financial markets in 2025.
Besides, financial markets workflows continued to transform at pace. The combination of gen AI, cloud, automation, personalisation and interoperability – all underpinned by a critical requirement for differentiated data and content – continue to present both opportunities and challenges for market participants.
A snapshot of 2024
Against this backdrop, we delivered the solutions our customers need, substantially enhancing the value of Workspace, as published in our recently launched external communications channel, LSEG Workspace updates.
Our strategic partnership with Microsoft has already begun to enhance and enable our Workspace ecosystem, with Financial Meeting Prep – a Microsoft Teams gen AI application powered by LSEG data – now available in public preview.
We are piloting externally our first gen AI feature integrated in Workspace. This is a significant step towards transforming user experience by enabling users to discover, visualise and share data and analytics using natural language.
In an AI world, content remains a key differentiator, and we continue to significantly invest in this. Our multi-year data, news and analytics partnership with leading media and news provider, Dow Jones is adding the Wall Street Journal and other Dow Jones news assets to our already strong news offering, comprising exclusive Reuters News and our proprietary capital markets insights including IFR, LPC, PFI and others, LSEG Workspace is unequivocally the market news leader. As a result, Workspace now has the best and most comprehensive news content in the market.
Likewise, our multi-year, strategic partnership with Dun & Bradstreet (D&B) has significantly enhanced our private markets offering. The combination of LSEG’s capital markets data, including deals, private equity, news and research, with D&B’s trusted private market data providing visibility on officers and directors, ownership insights and financial information for millions of companies globally, enables investment and capital market firms to drive better data-driven financial assessments and decisions.
Our partnership with leading productivity tools specialist, Macabacus, has turbocharged the banking workflow with a focus on streamlining workflows and boosting efficiency.
We have also integrated eMAXX, our comprehensive fixed income holdings database, into Workspace, allowing fixed income market participants to gain essential, competitive insights.
Our partnership with Tradefeedr, the leading network for FX trading analytics and collaborative data sharing, empowers the FX community by integrating Tradefeedr’s market leading FX pre- and post-trade transaction cost analytics with LSEG Workspace and FXall.
Apart from these partnerships, we have launched new and enhanced existing workflows benefitting multiple customer communities.
We have enhanced our buy-side solutions by integrating TORA, our order and execution management platform, into the Workspace ecosystem. This delivers a seamless, end-to-end workflow from market monitoring and idea generation to trade and post-trade.
We have supercharged wealth advisor productivity through the launch of our transformative Advisor Dashboard. By combining the power of LSEG’s content and client portfolio information, the Advisor Dashboard enables advisors to quickly generate valuable insights on relevant activity impacting their clients, saving them time, and creating better client engagement opportunities.
We have expanded our Advanced Dealing community, LSEG’s next-generation dealing product, which has transformed the FX and, as of recently, Fixed Income trading workflows by using AI to auto-populate trade tickets based on traders’ real-time live conversations.
We are integrating the trading capabilities of FXall with Workspace. FXall users within Workspace will benefit from an intuitive, seamless FX trading workflow, from market monitoring and price discovery to execution and risk management within a single screen.
Collaboration and awards
On the awards front, we are proud to have been recognised by multiple industry bodies, including:
- Best Market Access at the Leaders in Trading 2024 Awards (LSEG Tora)
- Winner in three categories at the 2024 Sustainable Investment Awards:
- Climate index provider of the year
- ESG data initiative of the year
- Stock Exchange of the year
- Best Front Office Solution at the Wealth Briefing MENA Awards 2024
- Central Banking Financial Market Infrastructure Services Award at the Central Banking Awards 2024
- Best Islamic Finance Data Provider and Best Research House at the Asset Triple A Islamic Finance Awards 2024
Looking ahead
The year ahead marks a significant milestone for LSEG Workspace as the sun sets on Eikon in mid-2025, enabling a new era of profitable growth.
At the same time, I am hugely excited about the deliverables of our strategic partnership with Microsoft which are enabling augmentation of users through AI and intuitive experiences. Interoperability between Microsoft and Workspace, allows us to meet customers where they are, anywhere, anytime, through web, desktop and mobile, while simplifying users’ workflows.
Open Directory, that will enhance collaboration, is also externally piloted with targeted communities.
As we move towards a new year, we remain committed to our mission to enable decision making, remove friction and boost productivity by delivering seamless workflows and leading content to our customers.
Finally, I would like to take this opportunity to thank our customers for their trust in our workflows and wish everyone a happy and prosperous 2025.
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