ICE CEO Details Decade-Long Pursuit For Liffe

IntercontinentalExchange Inc. (ICE) founder Jeff Sprecher on Wednesday detailed a decade-long pursuit of the European futures platform now owned by NYSE Euronext (NYX) as he presses the latest bid to lift his company into the elite tier of global exchanges.

Sprecher, ICE's chairman and chief executive, said the company had held talks with management at the London-based Liffe unit in an effort to diversify his commodity-focused business with some of the world's most heavily-traded financial futures and options.

"ICE has a long history of interest in owning the Liffe business," he said on a post-earnings call. "I was never able to convince any of the various CEOs that oversaw the parent companies over the last 10 years that that was a good idea."

This included the current management of NYSE Euronext, which he said had engaged with ICE on the topic until mid-2010.

"In fairness to NYSE, it would have meant they would have given up the management control of their derivatives business," he said.

The Big Board operator declined comment. NYSE Euronext wants to stay wedded to the high-margin derivatives business, and its board has twice spurned the joint effort to carve up the company led by Sprecher and Nasdaq OMX Group Inc. (NDAQ)

Sprecher is widely regarded within the industry as one of its most visionary and creative executives, and a string of acquisitions has expanded ICE from its roots as a power-trading exchange.

The disclosure of his long-held interest in Liffe--itself long coveted by NYSE Euronext merger partner Deutsche Boerse AG (DB1.XE) and others--highlights Sprecher's desire for a more transformational deal.

The door appeared to have closed after his unsuccessful pursuit in 2007 of the Chicago Board of Trade--which opted to merge with the Chicago Mercantile Exchange to create CME Group Inc. (CME) after an often-bitter five-month contest. But Liffe, formerly the London International Financial Futures Exchange, has been a long-time target, Sprecher said.

Since ICE acquired the London-based International Petroleum Exchange, or IPE, in 2001, Sprecher said he has been pitching Liffe's various owners on the idea of ICE taking control, with ownership split in a joint venture structure.

At the start of the decade ICE was an upstart energy market that drew upon its momentum in U.S. power trading to acquire the IPE, giving the company an international platform for crude oil and natural gas trade.

Euronext, the Paris-based exchange operator, agreed at the end of 2001 to acquire Liffe, subsequently merging with NYSE Group in 2007 to form NYSE Euronext. The derivatives arm was renamed NYSE Liffe.

Adding NYSE Liffe's franchise of interest-rate and stock-index futures to ICE's existing platforms for trading energy, commodities and currency contracts would diversify its offering and make it the world's fourth-largest futures exchange company by volume, according to figures compiled by the Futures Industry Association.

-By Jacob Bunge, Dow Jones Newswires; 312-750-4117; jacob.bunge@dowjones.com

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