It's been almost two months since Intercontinental Exchange made an unsolicited bid to buy CBOT Holdings in an attempt to break apart that exchange's deal to be acquired by the Chicago Mercantile Exchange.
In the time since the bid was made, ICE's stock has been firm, moving slightly higher, while that of the CME has dropped sharply. That divergence in performance has given the ICE bid of 1.42 of its shares, a $40 a share premium to that of the CME bid, or roughly $2.2 billion in additional dollars.
Tuesday, the board of the CBOT was meeting to consider ICE's bid, having conducted discussions with ICE and done its due diligence. Given the vast disparity in bids, it would seem likely the board of CBOT will determine the ice bid is superior to that of the CME.
The question is whether the CME and its advisors will try to prevent such a determination by raising the CME bid, which currently calls for 0.3006 of its shares for each CBOT share.
It's not clear what the CME is planning and even if the CBOT comes to the determination that the ICE bid is superior, the CME will have five days to try and reverse that situation.