Friday morning: NASDAQ to buy Nordic stock exchange group OMX

Trading in OMX stock suspended on Thursday amid rumours

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American technology stock market NASDAQ is set to purchase the Nordic exchange industry group OMX, which, among several others, runs the Helsinki Stock Exchange.
      NASDAQ’s take-over bid values OMX at EUR 2.8 billion.
      The bid exceeds OMX’s stock price from two days ago by 19 per cent.
      The boards of directors of NASDAQ and OMX, supported by key shareholders of both groups, have entered into a tentative agreement to combine the two. The new company will be called the NASDAQ OMX Group.
      The combination is described by the two groups as "the largest global network of exchanges and exchange customers linked by technology". NASDAQ and OMX have a combined workforce of 2,400 people, and annual net sales of just under a billion euros.
     
Trading in OMX shares was discontinued on Thursday owing to the merger rumours.
      Initially there were suspicions that both NASDAQ and the London Stock Exchange (LSE) might be interested in buying OMX. In the evening, however, the news agency Reuters confirmed that NASDAQ had put in a bid.
      This was supported by the notion that NASDAQ interrupted the trading of its own shares in New York at 4 p.m. United States eastern standard time, late on Thursday night in Finland.
     
The Internet edition of The Wall Street Journal listed some of the transaction details later in the evening. NASDAQ will purchase all outstanding shares in OMX for a price of around SEK 200 per share, which is ten per cent higher than the standing OMX stock price at the time the trading was interrupted.
      The head of the combined group will be NASDAQ CEO Robert Greifeld accompanied by OMX CEO Magnus Böcker as the number two man, though both companies declined to confirm this information on Thursday.
     
OMX controls around 80 per cent of the stock market in the Nordic Countries and in the Baltic States. The group has stock exchanges in Stockholm, Helsinki, Copenhagen, Reykjavik, Riga, Tallinn, and Vilna. The group is also one of the world’s largest developers and suppliers of electronic trading technology.
      In April the OMX Group denied having received any official or unofficial take-over bids from NASDAQ. The group settled for stating that it was negotiating with several stock market players over different forms of collaboration.


Links:
  OMX Corporate
  NASDAQ Press Release: NASDAQ and OMX to combine

Helsingin Sanomat