With both Trayport and United States treasuries platform eSpeed sold to major exchange operators in recent years, much of BGC’s most valuable technology assets – either historical or newly-acquired – will now be distributed around the Street.
Advertisement
Intercontinental Exchange Group (ICE), the exchange group that owns the NY Stock Exchange, has announced that it has agreed to buy broker services vendor Trayport for $650 million in shares.
The agreement is important for ICE in that it will usher in the provision of a suite of new services to the European OTC energy markets, which presently include comprehensive offerings of European power, natural gas and coal options.
In the summer of 2014, shortly after CME Group made its initial bid for the technology units, CME CFO James Parisi said that in aggregate, the net consideration for Trayport and FENICS was approximately $655 million before certain tax benefits. “The proposed sale price represents $650 million of the $750 million that BGC will pay for all of GFI”. “Indeed, one of the main reasons that BGC pursued GFI was the expectation that the sale of Trayport would dramatically lower the price and risk involved with respect to purchasing the rest of GFI’s businesses”. BGC and GFI intend to remain Trayport clients.
Intercontinental Exchange has said that, as a part of the company, Trayport will extend a greater range of assurance and analytics services as the over the counter markets grow.
London-based Trayport will continue to serve its customers-energy producers and consumers, brokers, exchanges and clearing houses-with its existing technology platform. These vital markets will require continued investment as part of the European energy market evolution. ICE, he adds, is “well placed to support the development of the systems”.
Advertisement
“We are pleased to take the next step in a rapidly changing European OTC utility landscape with ICE’s stability and capacity to invest in our growth”.
