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NEW YORK — London-based LCH.Clearnet Group Ltd., a key European trading securities clearing house, has received a takeover bid for as much as $1.2 billion from a consortium of banks, including J.P. Morgan Chase Co., according to online media reports including The Wall Street Journal.
LCH.Clearnet spokeswoman Andrea Schlaepfer, reached by telephone, confirmed Saturday that the company had received a takeover offer late Friday from a "consortium of ICAP plus some banks" but declined to comment on the financial details of the offer.
According to online reports posted Saturday, the bank consortium also includes Deutsche Bank AG as well as eight other banks and London-based broker ICAP PLC. It offered the bid late Friday as part of an effort to cut costs of trading stocks, bonds and derivatives and to get more control over a business that the banks believe has significant earnings opportunity, according to WSJ.com.
WSJ.com attributed the report to an anonymous source that was familiar with the matter.
Joseph Evangelisti, a spokesman at JPMorgan Chase Co., declined to comment on the report.
In October, LCH — which is 73.3 percent owned by banks and brokers who use its services, according to its Web site — announced that it was considering going to a wholly user-owned not-for-profit model as part of a merger with U.S. Depository Trust & Clearing Corp. But the merger with Depository Trust stalled and finally fell through last month.
Meanwhile, the consortium expressed an interest in taking over LCH in November and talks have been going on since then. LCH now has to decide whether to stick to the not-for-profit model or to be taken over and adopt a for-profit model.
LCH serves major international exchanges and platforms, equity, exchange-traded derivatives, energy, freight, interbank interest rate swaps markets and the majority of the Euro-denominated and sterling bond and repo markets, according to the company Web site.
