Nasdaq may make counter bid for rival

Under the offer being contemplated, the Nasdaq Stock Market parent would finance the transaction with up to $5bn (£3bn) in debt and sell NYSE Euronext’s Liffe derivatives business to IntercontinentalExchange, the source said.

An offer could come as early as this week.

Bringing Nasdaq and the New York Stock Exchange parents together would create a stock-trading powerhouse in the United States and Europe that would also dominate the business of listing US public companies, and dwarf other US options markets.

If successful, such a counter-offer would redraw the global exchange map and thwart yet another merger plan by Germany’s Deutsche Boerse.

ICE, an Atlanta-based futures specialist, would meanwhile nab London’s Liffe platform – a profitable gem that would give CEO Jeffrey Sprecher an interest-rate business that eluded him when ICE’s bid for the Chicago Board of Trade failed four years ago.

Any bid would follow weeks of speculation that Nasdaq – seen as the odd man out of a global mergers frenzy among exchanges – would jump into the fray.

But with the deals driven largely by a need to diversify and ramp up profitable derivatives trading, such a move by Nasdaq to expand in its core, low-margin, stock-trading business could raise questions for shareholders.