ICE to buy MarketAxess for $5.7 billion

Intercontinental Exchange will acquire MarketAxess for about $5.7 billion, agreeing to pay $167 per share in cash. The per-share price is a 33% premium to MarketAxess’s closing stock price on July 29, 2026. The companies expect to complete the transaction in the first half of 2027, subject to shareholder and regulatory approvals.

MarketAxess runs an electronic trading platform for fixed-income instruments and connects roughly 2,100 institutional investors and broker-dealers across more than 90 countries. Its platform supports trading in corporate bonds, municipal bonds, emerging market debt, Eurobonds, U.S. Treasuries and other fixed-income products.

ICE, which owns the New York Stock Exchange, said it will combine MarketAxess’s institutional network with ICE’s retail bond business and data infrastructure to create a single trading ecosystem for fixed income. The companies expect the integration to produce a consolidated liquidity pool, expanded trading protocols, richer pre-trade analytics and improved price discovery.

MarketAxess’s proprietary trading data and analytics will be paired with ICE’s fixed income pricing, reference data and index businesses. ICE described the combination as creating a large fixed-income data platform intended to serve a wide range of market participants.

ICE highlighted the size of the global bond market, which it estimates at $145.1 trillion in outstanding debt, and said fixed-income trading has been historically fragmented and opaque. The companies said the deal is designed to address those market structures for investors and dealers.

Jeff Sprecher, ICE’s chair and chief executive, described the transaction as building ‘the fixed income ecosystem that investors have always deserved — one that is transparent, efficient, fully connected, and accessible to all.’

The transaction is subject to customary closing conditions, including approval by MarketAxess shareholders and regulatory clearances, with completion targeted for the first half of 2027.