Founded in 1989, privately-owned Gatelab had annual revenues of approximately Euro4.5 million in 2012. Gatelab's technology is MIFID compliant and supports manual, automatic and algorithmic trading, smart order routing for equities, bonds and HFT.

GateLab's Traderpath engine is used by the London Stock Exchange Group for the Italian and UK derivatives market and the Italian equity and bond market.

The company, which opened its only overseas office in London in 2008, has been searching for a partner to help it expand internationally.

Antoine Shagoury, LSE COO and CIO says: "Innovation is a key driver of business success and we are confident that Gatelab's technology and innovative approach will be of great benefit to the Group."

Financial terms of the transaction were not disclosed.