CME Group Inc on Wednesday agreed to purchase the Kansas City Board of Trade for $126 million in cash, cementing CME's dominance in world grain futures markets and keeping rival IntercontinentalExchange from gaining an important foothold.It is CME's first exchange purchase in five years since it wrapped up a buying spree that put the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, the Chicago Board of Trade and the energy-focused New York Mercantile Exchange all under its control.The deal comes as the Chicago-based giant faces one of the biggest challenges yet to its benchmark wheat, soybean and corn contracts: ICE's renewed efforts to build its agricultural markets business, including the launch this year of look-alike U.S. grain futures that opened a new front in the decade-long battle for commodity derivatives dominance.So far, ICE's copycat contracts of ICE's electronic exchange have garnered little volume. But CME has responded swiftly to protect its lucrative grains franchise, a mainstay of global markets for decades, expanding trading hours to keep step with ICE in a move some floor traders have protested.
CME Group Inc. (CME Group) offers a range of global products across all asset classes based on interest rates, equity indexes, foreign exchange, energy, agricultural commodities, metals, weather and real estate. Shares of CME traded higher by 0.7% or $0.4/share to $57.89. In the past year, the shares have traded as low as $44.94 and as high as $60.92. On average, 2111260 shares of CME exchange hands on a given day and today's volume is recorded at 1147057.
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