NYSE Euronext have come to a definitive agreement to acquire Wombat Financial Software, a privately held provider of financial market data management applications.
This acquisition broadens NYSE Euronext’s offering of market-agnostic connectivity, transaction and data management applications to customers globally by integrating Wombat’s market data enterprise software and services with the NYSE TransactToolsSM connectivity and messaging business.
Under terms of the agreement, NYSE Euronext will acquire 100% of Wombat for $200 million in cash consideration, and will also create a retention pool for employees. This transaction, which was unanimously approved by the NYSE Euronext board of directors, is expected to close early second quarter 2008, and will be accretive to NYSE Euronext’s 2009 earnings.
“Wombat is a technology innovator and world leader in market data management solutions, and we welcome the addition of the company’s entrepreneurial management team and employees to NYSE Euronext. Wombat bridges our commercial technology and market data strategies, broadening our customer reach and enabling NYSE Euronext to deliver advanced technology solutions to our customers’ increasing data management challenges,” says Duncan L. Niederauer, CEO, NYSE Euronext.
“Our mission to become a leader in the global market data, messaging and trading technology sectors has been a driving force for the last five years. Synergies with TransactTools and other NYSE Euronext businesses will allow us to dramatically accelerate the growth of our value proposition; plus deliver software and services into a much broader customer base,” adds Danny Moore, CEO, Wombat.
“By leveraging Wombat’s low latency market data solutions, we’ve been able to accelerate the build-out of our global electronic trading and risk capabilities. With quote and trade traffic ever increasing, sub-millisecond latency combined with the ability to process this data in real time is important for next generation trading systems,” says Rohit D’Souza, global head of Equities and Alternative Investments, Merrill Lynch.
“Consistent with our goal of providing the best-of-breed technology products for electronic trading, we have now added the market-leading platform for high-performance data management and distribution. By integrating Wombat’s sophisticated data platform with TransactTools’ leading connectivity and messaging infrastructure, we’ll be able to offer customers a very efficient end-to-end solution to access markets globally,” adds Larry Leibowitz, head of Global Technology, NYSE Euronext.
Applications will be delivered both as enterprise software products and as managed services on the NYSE TransactTools Secure Financial Transaction Infrastructure network, ranging from hosting co-location for high-speed trading, direct market access connectivity and algorithmic execution, and new data products such as integrated and consolidated price feeds.