Charles Li compared himself to Romeo in his doomed pursuit of the London Stock Exchange. The Hong Kong bourse boss more closely resembled Tybalt in trying to bust up a happy couple. Having given the raspberry to his approach at an enterprise value of £31.6bn, LSE must now make a go of it with Refinitiv. Shakespeare’s lovers were spared domesticity tests by their early demise
Like the Capulet scrapper, Mr Li badly misjudged his battle. His worst mistake was to believe an offer of £83.60 per LSE share would excite investors. Otherwise he would never have gone public with an approach LSE had greeted coolly privately.
But shareholders declined to frogmarch LSE boss David Schwimmer into deal talks, or sell en masse to event-driven hedge funds. They had already given their blessing to the group’s purchase of Refinitiv, Reuters’ data and trading platform operations, at an enterprise value of £22bn. This support has lifted LSE shares some 25 per cent to over £70 each.