NEW YORK - Word that financial-exchange operator CME Group Inc. is in discussions to acquire Nymex Holdings Inc. doesn't come as a surprise to many observers because their computers have been in talks for a while now.
CME Group, which is the result of last year's combination of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange and the Chicago Board of Trade, already provides an electronic-trading platform for Nymex products -- a relationship that could make any combination easier to carry out.
As electronic trading continues to take on a larger role for exchanges worldwide, technology has become an important arbiter of whether a merger will live up to its promise and result in a truly unified company or whether it will simply result in loosely related entities stitched together under one banner.
CME Group said Monday that it was in talks to buy Nymex for about $11 billion in cash and stock and that the companies are in a 30-day period of exclusive negotiations. CME Group is considering an offer of $36 per share plus 0.1323 share of its stock for each share of Nymex Holdings.
At $119.22 per share, the deal values Nymex, which runs the New York Mercantile Exchange, at $11.07 billion.
"One of the things that we have been noticing is that the technology platform is becoming a very important part of these equations," said Michael Henry, an exchange expert for consulting firm Accenture Ltd.
While the shared technology could make it easier for a CME-Nymex deal, any exchange merger brings substantial technological changes.
While a merger could be somewhat "more straightforward" for CME and Nymex, "it's not plug-and-play by any means," he said.
