By Greg Hazley
Three agencies are working the $8.2B acquisition of the New York Stock Exchange by commodities trader Atlanta-based IntercontinentalExchange.
The $33.12-per-share deal for NYSE Euronext -- $2.7B in cash, the rest in stock -- announced today, is expected to close in the second half of 2013, subject to U.S. and European regulatory approval, as well as the shareholders of both companies.
In the U.S., Sard Verbinnen & Co. chairman and CEO George Sard and managing director Renee Soto are handling the deal. Brunswick Group staffers in London (partner Gill Ackers) and Paris (partner Jerome Biscay) are also on the beat, as well as RLM Finsbury partners James Murgatroyd and Matthew Newtown in London.
Kelly Loeffler is VP of IR and corporate comms. for IntercontinentalExchange, which is known by its ticker symbol ICE, while Robert Rendine heads global communications as SVP at NYSE Euronext.
The New York Times has called the NYSE “with its opening bell and floor traders … the public image of a stock market for two centuries.”
ICE said it is committed to preserving the NYSE Euronext brand and will maintain a dual headquarters in Atlanta and New York. ICE also said it will explore an IPO of Euronext as a European-based entity after the deal.
ICE chief Jeffrey Sprecher would continue as chairman and CEO of the combined company. NYSE CEO Duncan Niederauer would be president of the combination and CEO of NYSE Group.
“The board of NYSE Euronext carefully considered a range of strategic alternatives and concluded that ICE is the ideal partner for NYSE Euronext in an evolving market landscape," said NYSE chairman Jan-Michael Hessels.
Sard Verbinnen, Abernathy MacGregor Group and Germany’s Hering Schutppener had worked a scuttled deal for Deutsche Boerese to take over the NYSE last year. Also last year, Brunswick Group repped Nasdaq OMX, along with ICE, in another failed, $11.3B bid to kill the Deutsche Boerse deal.
The Wall Street Journal reported today that a combination of ICE and NYSE Euronext would likely raise fewer regulatory concerns because the two exchange groups don't have as much direct overlap in the markets they run. |