Dubai: Borse Dubai Limited, the holding company for Dubai's stock exchange interests, said on Thursday it had sold Nordic and Baltic stock market operator OMX to US-based Nasdaq as previously agreed.
The Dubai firm sold 117,227,931 shares in OMX, representing 97.2 per cent of the total number of shares and votes in Stockholm-based firm, to Nasdaq in exchange for some 42,901,148 newly-issued shares in Nasdaq and about $1.9 billion in cash.
Additionally, 17,660,367 newly issued Nasdaq shares have been deposited in an independently managed US-based trust for the economic benefit of Borse Dubai, the company said in a statement.
The shares held by the trust are eventually expected to be sold by the trust.
Both Borse Dubai and Nasdaq were trying to take over OMX on their own last year, but later reached a complex friendly deal in September, which allowed the Dubai firm to buy OMX for about $4.9 billion and then sell it to the US company.
Name change
Nasdaq is changing its name to Nasdaq OMX Group Inc following completion of the transaction.
As part of the deal, Nasdaq has invested $50 million by subscribing for newly-issued shares in Dubai International Financial Exchange, a Borse Dubai company, and holds about 33 per cent of the outstanding DIFX shares on a fully diluted basis.
"The completed transactions constitute a key milestone in establishing Dubai as one of the world's leading financial centres. Nasdaq and Borse Dubai will together develop DIFX as a global exchange which will bridge the US, Europe and the Middle East and further develop and link mature and emerging markets," Borse Dubai chairman Eisa Kazim said.
