Stock Exchange, Acquisition | featured news

Nasdaq OMX Group Inc agreed to buy electronic Treasuries-trading platform eSpeed from BGC Partners Inc for $750 million in cash, providing the exchange operator an entry into one of the world's largest and most liquid cash markets.

...Today, as individual investors buy and sell common stocks less and less, the transaction symbolizes the rapidly advancing utilization of vehicles that are too esoteric for the general public to comprehend– futures contracts and options on the direction of interest rates, or oil and natural gas prices, or metals and agricultural products like wheat and corn, or precious metals like gold and silver, and especially credit instruments like mortgages and bank loans.

Hong Kong's stock exchange operator said Friday it has agreed to buy the 135-year-old London Metal Exchange for 1.4 billion pounds ($2.2 billion) as it shifts into commodities to capitalize on Chinese demand.