Intercontinental Exchange to buy financial data firm Interactive Data for $5.2 bn

Intercontinental Exchange Inc (ICE) today struck a deal to buy financial data firm Interactive Data Corp (IDC) from private equity firms Silver Lake and Warburg Pincus in a $5.2-billion deal.

The deal includes $3.65 billion in cash and $1.55 billion in ICE stock.

IDC, based in Massachusetts, is one of the world's leading providers of financial data, serving the mutual fund, bank, asset management, hedge fund, securities and financial instrument processing and administration sectors.

ICE's data business currently spans nine asset classes across the eleven exchanges and seven clearing houses it operates, including the NYSE Group and ICE Futures exchanges.

ICE also offers benchmark and valuation services for Libor, exchange traded funds, a range of financial derivatives, and clearing house positions.

IDC  said that the combined company will offer customers efficiencies in accessing data on an integrated platform while serving the growing demand for data, analysis, valuation and connectivity globally.

''This transaction furthers our expansion into meeting the financial information needs of our market participants globally. With our diverse markets across virtually all asset classes, IDC will enable us to address more growth opportunities by leveraging the distribution and reach of our complementary global platforms for trading, clearing and data on a combined basis," said ICE chairman and CEO Jeffrey Sprecher.

"With IDC as the cornerstone in the next phase of extending our services, we will build on our track record of solid execution on integration and innovation by focusing on the needs of our customers in the evolving data services marketplace."