Intercontinental Exchange (NYSE: ICE) has announced a definitive agreement to acquire MarketAxess Holdings (Nasdaq: MKTX) for $167 per share in cash, representing a 33% premium and a total enterprise value of approximately $5.7 billion, with BofA Securities and Sullivan & Cromwell advising ICE and J.P. Morgan Securities and Weil Gotshal advising MarketAxess. The combination brings together MarketAxess’s network of approximately 2,100 institutional investors and broker-dealers across 90+ countries trading corporate bonds, municipal bonds, emerging market debt, and U.S. Treasuries with ICE’s established retail and wealth bond trading franchise, deep data and analytics, and global index business, creating a unified fixed income ecosystem expected to be EPS-accretive in the first full year. The transaction, unanimously approved by both boards, is expected to close in the first half of 2027, targeting $100 million in annual run-rate expense synergies and accelerating ICE’s decade-long mission of applying technology and network effects to the $145 trillion global bond market.

Intercontinental Exchange to Acquire MarketAxess, Creating a Premier Fixed Income Marketplace