Nymex Files $250M IPO

NEW YORK—The New York Mercantile Exchange (Nymex) joined the pack last week by filing for an estimated $250 million initial public offering (IPO).

The group will use JPMorgan and Merrill Lynch as its lead underwriters. Banc of America Securities (BAS), Citigroup, Lehman Brothers and Sandler O'Neill and Partners will serve as co-managers, according to July 17 filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The move comes amid a spate of IPOs from exchanges like the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) and CBOT Holdings (CBOT).

Nymex demutualized six years ago and signed a non-binding letter of intent with private equity firm General Atlantic last year, under which General Atlantic invested $135 million for a 10 percent equity stake in Nymex (DWT, Sept. 26, 2005).

Nymex has had a year of reorganization and technology shuffling. In regulatory filings, it says recent moves are intended, in part, to expand its customer base in Asia and Europe.

In April, the organization entered into a technology services agreement with the CME to trade its products on CME's Globex e-trading platform. The plan was set in motion earlier this month when Nymex announced plans to move after-hours energy futures contracts from its own electronic trading platform, Nymex Access, to CME Globex by Aug. 7 (DWT, July 17).

If Nymex acquires or merges with another entity, electronic trading of such products will be running on CME Globex within two years, according to SEC filings. The organization says in those filings that it plans to "opportunistically pursue acquisitions, strategic partnerships and joint ventures."

Last month, Nymex shuttered the open-outcry trading in its European division and went electronic (DWT, June 12). That came three months after Nymex Europe announced that it was considering such a move due to a lack of interest from market participants and falling volumes (DWT, March 13).