Monday, January 14, 2008

NYSE Buys Wombat

A friend of mine at one of the NYSE-owned companies jokingly warned me last week that, today, there would be an announcement that would knock my socks off.

I wasn't prepared for the onslaught of emails that I started receiving around 9:00 AM, announcing the acquisition of Wombat by the NYSE. The guys from Wombat, who sit in the next row from me on the trading floor, gave me a look like "What? Who me?", while secretly counting their new-found riches under the table.

My only concern about this deal is a possible conflict-of-interest that might arise when a supposedly "exchange-neutral" information provider gets bought out by one of the exchanges that it is supposed to deal with. Conspiracy theorists might have a field day when there seems to be abnormal latency with a non-NYE exchange.

As far as CEP goes, my thought is .... would Coral8 be on the acquisition block next, seeing how closely they cooperate with Wombat and seeing how Reuters is aligning themselves with Streambase?

©2008 Marc Adler - All Rights Reserved

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