CNBC’s David Faber just announced a new twist to mergers among the exchanges.  Faber is reporting that the Intercontinental Exchange (ICE-NYSE) is making a rival offer of 1.42 shares for the CBOT (BOT-NYSE), which comes to $187.34 based on yesterday’s close; this is more than 10% premium to the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME-NYSE) pending merger with the CBOT.  A shareholder vote for CME/CBOT is scheduled in April.  ICE sees no anti-trust risks and ICE would move its HQ from Atlanta to Chicago and CBOT would own 51.5% of the combined company. 

Stay tuned, because this one will get complicated.  The CME & CBOT were already in the process of the initial integrations so this one can have some profound implications for both Chicago exchanges if the CME doesn’t come back with a higher bid.

Jon C. Ogg
March 15, 2007

Jon Ogg can be reached at jonogg@247wallst.com; he does not own securities in the companies he covers.