Dow Jones forms Financial Index Venture with CME Group
11 Feb 2010
Leading global news and business information provider Dow Jones & Company has formed a joint venture with the world's largest futures exchange CME Group to operate a global financial index.
CME Group will own 90 per cent of the new venture, Dow Jones Indexes, with News Corp-owned Dow Jones, will own the remaining10 per cent.
Dow Jones will contribute its Dow Jones Indexes business valued at $675 million and retain a key role in the management of the Dow Jones Industrial Average, while CME Group will contribute some market data services valued at $607.5 million to the joint venture.
The new joint venture will also raise approximately $613 million in third-party debt which will be used to pay a $607.5 million distribution to Dow Jones.
The joint venture represents just below 3 per cent of CME Group's 2008 revenue of $2.56 billion and is a fraction of its $18.69 billion market cap.
CME Group, formed in 2007 through the merger of Chicago Mercantile Exchange and the Chicago Board of Trade, is the leading equity index derivatives marketplace, offering futures and options on key benchmark indexes that cover the spectrum of small-, medium- and large-cap indexes in the US, Europe and Asia, including the DJIA as well as the S&P 500, NASDAQ-100, Nikkei 225 Stock Average, MSCI EAFE, FTSE / Xinhua China 25.
