Microsoft will purchase a 4% equity stake in the London Stock Exchange Group (LSEG), forming a 10-year cloud partnership.

The financial sector is an increasingly important one for cloud providers, with all of the major cloud providers vying for partnerships in the industry. Microsoft has scored a major one, forming a 10-year strategic partnership with the LSEG, one that will see the Redmond-based company take a 4% equity stake.

In exchange, the LSEG will migrate its data to Microsoft Azure and will use Microsoft Azure, AI, and Microsoft Teams to build its next-generation solutions. The deal will also see Scott Guthrie, Microsoft’s Executive Vice President, Cloud and AI Group, appointed as a non-executive director of LSEG.

“This strategic partnership is a significant milestone on LSEG’s journey towards becoming the leading global financial markets infrastructure and data business, and will transform the experience for our customers,” said David Schwimmer, CEO of LSEG.

“Bringing together our leading data sets, analytics, and global customer base with Microsoft’s comprehensive and trusted cloud services and global reach creates attractive revenue growth opportunities for both companies.

“We are delighted to welcome Microsoft as a shareholder. We believe our partnership with Microsoft will transform the way our customers discover, analyse, and trade securities around the world, and create substantial value over time. We look forward to delivering on that potential.”

The two companies will also explore other opportunities to integrate digital market infrastructure with cloud technology.

“Advances in the cloud and AI will fundamentally transform how financial institutions research, interact, and transact across asset classes, and adapt to changing market conditions,” said Satya Nadella, Microsoft CEO.

“Our partnership will bring together the industry leadership of the London Stock Exchange Group with the trust and breadth of the Microsoft Cloud — spanning Azure, AI, and Teams — to build next-generation services that will empower our customers to generate business insights, automate complex and time-consuming processes, and ultimately, do more with less.”