CME Group close to acquiring NYMEX
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Stacey Vanek-Smith: A mega-oil deal is going down in this country. The CME Group’s acquisition of NYMEX is expected to close today. The New York Mercantile Exchange is the world’s biggest energy market. From Chicago, Adriene Hill reports.
Adriene Hill: It was just last year when the Chicago Board of Trade and Chicago Mercantile Exchange got together. According to the Futures Industry Association, today’s deal will give CME Group control of 98 percent of all contracts traded on U.S. futures exchanges.
Michael Gorham: Which is really huge. They now become the only game in the country.
That’s Michael Gorham, a business professor at the Illinois Institute of Technology. He says there’s some concern CME Group will raise transaction fees, even though the merger probably won’t effect overhead costs much.
Gorham: The cost of adding each new trade is trivial, because this is just a little more space on the server rather than a little more space on the trading floor.
Today’s acquisition may not be the end of CME Group’s growth.
Randy Frederick is the Director of Derivatives for Charles Schwab:
Randy Frederick: There are probably options for them, domestically and internationally.
He expects CME Group may already be in discussions with exchanges in Europe or Asia.
In Chicago, I’m Adriene Hill for Marketplace.
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