London Stock Exchange revs up knowledge industry scope in SL

By Shehana Dain

Extending its foot print in Sri Lanka, the London Stock Exchange Group (LSEG) is geared to boost Sri Lanka’s knowledge economy by setting up its inaugural business services center to facilitate high end technological roles closely knitted to capital market infrastructure.

The global giant is aiming on hiring 400 local personnel for the job while the London Clearing House is deemed to be the first customer for the upcoming service center which is to be located at Tripoli Market, Maradana.

LSEG Group Head Shared Services Martin Ryan following his fruitful discussion with the Prime Minister on Wednesday said that Millennium IT, a fully owned subsidiary of the group will remain as a separate entity focused on software development while the new facility will provide backbone services for exchanges and clearing houses.

He also denoted that LSEG’s management was pleasantly surprised by the Government’s swift response to the idea pitched just over three months ago contrary to general perception of sluggish procurement processes owing to rigid bureaucracy in local agencies.

“We were in quite a hurry to set this up to hire everything was in a hurry and as you know time kills deals and we were pleasantly surprised by the response we got from Government agencies. Prime Minister is very enthused about this because knowledge economy is on top of his agenda.”

Group officials who were tight lipped about the investment figure however stressed that it would be of a ‘significant’ amount and will be reflected in their annual reports.

The 2 acre block of land offered by the Government at Tripoli Market will be given on a 10 years lease. LSEG Exchanges Technology Executive Director Duminda Liyanwela said that an agreement with this regard will be signed with the Board of Investments (BoI) and Urban Development Authority (UDA).

“We are hoping to go live by September if all goes well. By end of the year we would have hired about half of what’s expected to run the key services. If the program goes as planned Q1 2017 we would have completed the initial phase of the hiring, that being the first customer London clearing house. We are already getting calls from other entities who want to come to Colombo but one has to establish themselves before taking others in, otherwise you risk too much,” he added.

LSEG officials were also optimistic that this would act as a magnet for tech professionals overseas to come back to Sri Lanka and even act as an ambassador to block the pertaining brain drain in the country in the long run.  

It was also highlighted that there is a real resonance about what the group will bring to Sri Lanka other than the investment which is capital investment in infrastructure, hiring people and maintaining a facility of this nature, its mainly about the skills and knowledge brought in which does not exist in Sri Lanka.

 Headquartered in the UK, LSEG is a leading market infrastructure business, which has significant operations in North America, Italy, France and Sri Lanka. The group employs approximately 5,500 people worldwide.