Singapore’s state-owned Temasek Holdings has approached Nasdaq to buy its 30% stake in the London Stock Exchange (LSE), a newspaper reported on Sunday. The Sunday Times said in an unsourced report that Temasek had made the approach in recent days and the deal could lead to a full takeover of LSE by the Singaporean investor.
On August 20, Nasdaq Stock Market said it may sell its stake in LSE, worth £800 million ($1.6 billion), to bolster its chances of buying Nordic exchange operator OMX and it was already in touch with interested parties. The US exchange company said later in the day in a statement that it will not sell its LSE stake to a single buyer. The reported interest by Temasek, which owns stakes in UK banks Barclays and Standard Chartered, comes amid growing protectionism in Europe and the US towards sovereign wealth funds making aggressive overseas investments in search of higher returns.
The newspaper said several parties, including the New York Stock Exchange and the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, may enter the fray as well as investment and infrastructure funds, while another newspaper report said that Nasdaq was seeking to sell up to half of its LSE stake to Deutsche Boerse.Nasdaq, eager to expand its presence in overseas markets, is locked in a $4 billion bidding war with Borse Dubai for OMX, which owns exchanges in Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Iceland and the Baltic states.
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