The road to buying Chicago Board of Trade (CBoT) took another turn on 30 May when Intercontinental Exchange (ICE) announced a deal with Chicago Board Options Exchange (CBOE) to settle the ongoing CBoT exercise right issue.
Under the deal, ICE and CBOE agreed to pay CBoT members $500,000 for each trading right. The move, if ICE wins the bidding for CBoT, is the latest sweetener to the ICE bid. By offering a built-in solution to the ongoing exercise right issue as well as much more cash, ICE is slowly converting CBoT shareholders into supporters of ICE. ICE has offered $11bn for CBoT, about $1.4bn more than Chicago Mercantile Exchange's (CME) latest higher offer which rose 16%. CBoT's board has endorsed the latest CME bid as the better deal with a vote set for July.
The ICE/CBOE deal is valued at an...