Deutsche Boerse has sold its remaining stake in Bats Global Markets
Deutsche Boerse has offloaded its remaining shareholding in Bats Global Markets.
It had sold one third of its stake in the Kansas-based stock exchange operator for $86m (£70m) in October, and said it had already realised a net income contribution of around €23m (£19.7m) from that. It expects the newest sale to boost earnings by €68m this quarter.
The move, part of a strategy launched by boss Carsten Kengeter in 2015, comes after CBOE Holdings finalised its $3.4bn takeover of Bats earlier in the week.
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Kengeter said the German exchange's offloading forms part of its growth strategy to "optimise its portfolio of shareholdings".
It had the stake through International Securities Exchange, the US options business it sold to Nasdaq in March. ISE held a stake in DirectEdge, which then merged with Bats.
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The announcement comes after the fiasco involving London Stock Exchange and Deutsche Boerse's proposed megamerger. The deal, which had been in the works for months, derailed at the beginning of the week after the LSE said it couldn't agree to demands from EU regulators overseeing approval of the deal.
Late on Sunday evening, the LSE published a statement saying it expected the European Commission to block the merger on the basis that it would not divest its majority stake in an Italian trading platform that services Italian sovereign debt.