High-tech American stock market Nasdaq has bought a 15% stake at £11.75 a share in the London Stock Exchange (LSE) in a deal worth £447.7m.

The US exchange said that it had bought about 35 million LSE shares from Threadneedle Asset Management, the London market’s biggest institutional investor. Threadneedle confirmed this and said it now had only a 1% stake in the LSE.

An LSE spokesperson said: “We continue to believe that the LSE is the world’s most successful cash equity trading platform operating in the world’s most successful financial centre and are pleased to see this value recognised by the market.”