LSE expects a good outcome for full year

LONDON (Reuters) - London Stock Exchange Group (LSE.L: Quote, Profile, Research) said on Thursday it was confident of a good outcome for the financial year ending March 31.

The LSE, which is set to announce its preliminary results on May 22, said it had delivered a strong overall trading performance for the first 11 months.

It also said it had bought back nearly 2.9 million shares at a total cost of 45 million pounds since mid-January.

The average number of trades on SETS, the electronic platform of the LSE, rose 86 percent in the 11 months ended February to 629,000 a day, thanks to high levels of market volatility and the introduction of trading engine TradElect, which went live in June.

But the average value of a SETS bargain decreased 23 percent to 14,300 pounds, and the average yield per bargain dropped 33.6 percent to 0.89 pounds.

Trading at Borsa Italiana, which the LSE acquired in October, increased 23 percent to 288,000 trades per day in the same period, with the average daily value up 30 percent at 6.2 billion euros ($9.79 billion).

The LSE saw 365 IPOs in London, down from 470 a year ago. New issues on London's Alternative Investment Market (AIM) dropped 33 percent to 251.

In Italy, the number of new issue increased to 31 from 23 a year earlier.

(Reporting by Daisy Ku, editing by Will Waterman)