LSEG Buys Octus to Own the Data Layer of Private Credit
LSEG agreed to acquire Octus for $3.535 billion in cash. The deal is a bid to own the data and analytics layer of a $3.5 trillion private credit market as public and private credit converge.
London Stock Exchange Group agreed on Oct 22, 2026 to acquire Octus for $3.535 billion in cash. The sellers are funds advised by Permira and Octus management, including founder Kent Collier. The purchase puts a New York credit-intelligence firm inside LSEG's Data & Analytics division and stakes a claim on the information layer of private credit.
Octus was founded in 2013 by Collier. It sells credit intelligence, data, and workflows from its New York headquarters, with more than 900 employees, 750 customers, and more than 40,000 individual users at buy-side firms, investment banks, law firms, and advisory firms. The company is expected to generate over $300 million in revenue in 2026, with strong double-digit growth and an adjusted EBITDA margin of around 40%. It has delivered double-digit compound revenue growth since 2022.
Those figures describe a profitable data business. They do not, by themselves, explain a $3.535 billion cash check. The explanation sits in the market Octus already serves, and in LSEG's view that public and private credit are becoming one problem set.
A $3.5 trillion market with a thin data layer
The private credit industry has grown to an estimated $3.5 trillion. The private markets data, workflow, and access solutions segment around it is currently $7 billion to $9 billion and is expected to grow at a double-digit rate. LSEG is paying $3.535 billion in cash for a firm already inside that segment. The asset class is huge. The tooling around it is still a fraction of the capital it records.
That gap is the strategic case. Private credit grew as a substitute and a complement to syndicated loans and bonds. The allocators, law firms, and banks that live in those deals need intelligence and workflow the way listed markets need a tape. Octus already has 750 customers and more than 40,000 users in that chain. Buying it is a way to own the file, not merely to add another feed of liquid prices.
What LSEG already had in credit
LSEG already has a significant presence in liquid credit through news (IFR), evaluated pricing and corporate actions, and analytics (Yield Book and LPC). Those products cover the public and broadly traded side of the market. Octus brings illiquid and private credit capability, the part of credit where there is no exchange print and where intelligence and workflow are the product.
LSEG is also the majority owner of Tradeweb, which is separately planning to acquire Trumid. The group frames the Octus deal alongside that plan as creating a global leader in fixed income and credit. One move deepens data and workflow. The other sits with Tradeweb. Together they are an attempt to span credit as a single franchise, from liquid instruments LSEG already covers to the private market Octus was built to map.
Cash today, leverage at the top of the band
The transaction is expected to be immediately accretive to LSEG's Data & Analytics organic revenue growth, and additive to LSEG's guidance for Group organic subscription revenue growth of around 7% in 2027. It will be neutral to Adjusted EPS in the first full year after completion and accretive thereafter. It will be financed by external debt. LSEG expects leverage at the end of 2027 to be around the upper end of its 1.5x to 2.5x target range.
Closing is expected in the first half of 2027, subject to regulatory approval. Upon completion, Octus becomes part of the Data & Analytics division. Collier will continue to run Octus, reporting to Gianluca Biagini and Ron Lefferts, Co-Heads of Data & Analytics. David Schwimmer, LSEG's chief executive, is using debt capacity to buy a data asset rather than waiting to build private-credit coverage on top of IFR, Yield Book, and LPC. Morgan Stanley (lead) and Barclays advised LSEG. Evercore and Goldman Sachs advised Octus shareholders.
LSEG is paying $3.535 billion in cash because it treats the data infrastructure of private credit as the next contested layer of the capital markets, not as a niche software tuck-in. Private credit is already an estimated $3.5 trillion. The data, workflow, and access market around it is $7 billion to $9 billion and still growing at a double-digit rate. Octus is the firm LSEG chose to own that layer, and it is willing to finish 2027 near the top of its leverage range to get there.
