Intercontinental Exchange has agreed to acquire MarketAxess Holdings for $167 per share in cash, valuing the electronic bond trading platform at approximately $6 billion in equity and $5.7 billion in enterprise value. The price is a 33% premium to MarketAxess’s closing price on 29 July.
MarketAxess connects around 2,100 institutional investors and broker-dealers in more than 90 countries, with electronic trading across corporate bonds, municipal bonds, emerging market debt, Eurobonds and US Treasuries, and its Open Trading all-to-all marketplace. ICE will fold that network into a fixed income business it has been assembling by acquisition for more than a decade – Interactive Data in 2015, the Bank of America Merrill Lynch bond index franchise in 2017, and the BondPoint and TMC Bonds execution venues, bought for $400 million and $685 million respectively and consolidated under the ICE Bonds banner in 2019.“For more than two decades, ICE has pursued a clear and consistent strategy: take the largest, least-efficient corners of global finance and apply technology and network effects to improve transparency,” says Jeff Sprecher, chair and chief executive of ICE. “That is what we did in energy, in credit default swaps, and in mortgage technology. Acquiring MarketAxess is the natural next step in that journey.”
ICE Bonds runs click-to-trade, RFQ and portfolio auction protocols across corporates, municipals, treasuries, agencies and certificates of deposit, a pool ICE positions for smaller and odd-lot flow. The announcement describes the franchise as retail and wealth focused; ICE Bonds has previously described its own customer base as spanning institutional, retail and wealth manager segments. MarketAxess adds the institutional dealer-to-client network and the all-to-all pool that runs alongside it.
“MarketAxess contributes a leading fixed-income trading network and deep market expertise, while ICE brings additional retail and wealth trading protocols, strong data, connectivity, and a broader set of product capabilities,” says Chris Concannon, chief executive of MarketAxess. “Together, we will have the scale to invest more deeply in the areas that matter most to our customers.”
ICE is funding the purchase entirely in cash, raised through a mix of bonds, term loan and commercial paper. Gross leverage starts at 3.4 times, with a stated target of 3.0 times or below within 18 to 24 months of closing. The company is raising baseline quarterly share repurchases to $400 million from $350 million, and expects the transaction to be accretive to adjusted earnings per share in the first full year after close.ICE Data Services supplies the continuous evaluated prices used to mark bond portfolios where no recent trade exists, alongside reference data and the index franchise; MarketAxess supplies its own trading data and, through the TraX Tape product launched earlier this year, a consolidated view of bond market activity built around the UK and EU transparency reforms. Firms currently taking pricing from one and execution from the other would be taking both from the same owner.
Both companies operate alternative trading systems in US corporate and municipal bonds. ICE’s last large acquisition, the $13.1 billion purchase of Black Knight announced in May 2022, closed in September 2023 after the Federal Trade Commission sued to block it and ICE agreed to divest two mortgage technology businesses, Empower and Optimal Blue.
Both boards have unanimously approved the deal, which ICE expects to close in the first half of 2027, subject to MarketAxess stockholder approval and regulatory clearances.
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