By Meg Short

(Bloomberg) -- The London Stock Exchange Group Plc has announced plans to buy back £3 billion ($4.1 billion) of its own shares, as it reported full year results less than a month after it emerged that Elliott Investment Management had taken a stake.

The group, which bought back £2.1 billion in 2025, has already purchased £415 million of its own shares in the year to date and plans to pay out the additional £3 billion by February next year, according to a statement Thursday. The company also hiked its final dividend 15.7% to 103 pence a share and set new guidance for the next two years.

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LSEG gained as much as 5% in early London trading, the most since February 11 when Elliott’s investment first became public.

Still, the increased buyback falls short of the £5 billion program that Bloomberg News reported Elliott was pushing for earlier this month.

The buyback “is the right amount,” LSEG Chief Executive Officer David Schwimmer said in a Bloomberg Television interview Thursday. “It’s the biggest share buyback we have ever announced.”

LSEG CEO David Schwimmer joins Bloomberg TV to discuss its full year results, AI, and the changes Elliott Investment Management are pushing for. Schwimmer speaks with Bloomberg’s Lizzy Burden and Anna Edwards on The Opening Trade. Source: Bloomberg

LSEG expects mid to high single digit growth in 2026 and capital expenditure to fall to 8% of total income in 2029, according to new guidance unveiled alongside its full year earnings. That’s broadly in line with the 6.5% to 7.5% range it targeted a year earlier, with the company ultimately delivering total income growth of 5.8% in 2025.

Shares of LSEG have been caught up in the broad selloff in businesses at risk of disruption from artificial intelligence. Elliott seized on the opportunity and is now pushing for LSEG to show investors how it could stand to be a beneficiary of AI. It wants the company to show how its sticky data business would actually see more demand from AI applications while its markets unit is largely immune, people familiar with its thinking told Bloomberg News earlier this month.