London Stock Exchange Group shares jumped over 2% Wednesday after reports that Elliott Investment Management had built a stake in the company. The rally came as Barclays analysts called the stock's underperformance among European exchanges "overdone," arguing that AI-related fears have been exaggerated.

Barclays research shows LSEG has been the weakest performer in Europe's exchange sector since mid-2025, with shares hitting three-year lows. The bank estimates only about 5% of LSEG's total group revenue is potentially exposed to AI disruption, based on the company's own breakdown of data and analytics subsegments.

The selloff intensified after Anthropic released its Cowork plug-ins and launched Claude Opus 4.6, rekindling questions about "terminal growth" for LSEG's data-driven businesses. However, Barclays argues the market reaction has been disproportionate, noting LSEG's multiple data-licensing agreements with Microsoft, OpenAI, and other AI firms actually position it to benefit from the technology rather than be threatened by it.