london stock exchange group plc reported on friday a significant rise in pretax profit for the first half of 2022 and said it is launching a share buyback program with an aggregate value of up to 750 million pounds 9119 million the stockexchange and financialinformation company posted a pretax profit of gbp803 million compared with gbp463 million for the same period a year earlier total income including recoveries increased to gbp374 billion from gbp302 billion for the yearearlier period the board declared an interim dividend of 317 pence a share up from 250 pence a year earlier we are managing costs well and we continue to make progress to achieve our synergies we are successfully executing on our strategy with good momentum going into the second half it said