Acquisition

5th Jun 2006 10:12

ICAP PLC05 June 2006 ICAP completes acquisition of EBS London, 5 June 2006. ICAP plc (IAP.L) the world's largest interdealer broker,has completed the acquisition of EBS Group Limited (EBS), the pre-eminentprovider of foreign exchange trading and market data solutions to theprofessional spot foreign exchange community. The acquisition, which was announced in April 2006, will combine EBS's strengthsin electronic spot foreign exchange with ICAP's Electronic Broking business tocreate a single global multi-product business with further growth potential andsignificant economies of scale. This platform will provide customers with moreefficient electronic trade execution, reduced integration costs and give accessto broad liquidity across a wide product range. The consideration for 100% of the share capital of EBS is US$517 million in cashand 36,100,234 new ICAP shares which have been allotted to the EBS shareholdersthat elected to receive them today and which will be admitted to trading on theLondon Stock Exchange from Tuesday 6 June 2006. These new ICAP shares aresubject to lock-up arrangements for a period of six months. ICAP's issued sharecapital, following the issue of these new shares, is 643,832,962 shares. The cash consideration paid to EBS shareholders was financed by a combination ofICAP's internal cash resources and new term loan and revolving credit facilitiesprovided by J.P.Morgan Chase Bank, N.A., HSBC Bank plc, Lloyds TSB Bank plc andThe Royal Bank of Scotland plc. Contacts: Michael Spencer Group Chief Executive (44) 20 7050 7400 Mike Sheard Director of Corporate Affairs (44) 20 7050 7103 Neil Bennett The Maitland Consultancy (44) 20 7379 5151 About EBS Launched in September 1993 by a group of the world's largest foreign exchangemarket making banks, EBS is the pre-eminent provider of foreign exchange tradingand market data solutions to the professional spot foreign exchange community.Approximately US$145 billion in spot foreign exchange, 700,000 ozs gold and7,000,000 ozs silver transactions are conducted over the EBS Spot Dealing Systemin more than 40 countries each day. The EBS shareholders were subsidiaries of the following banks and institutions:ABN AMRO, Bank of America, Barclays, Citigroup, Commerzbank, Credit Suisse FirstBoston, HSBC, JPMorgan Chase, Lehman Brothers, The Royal Bank of Scotland,S-E-Banken, UBS AG and the Minex Corporation of Japan. More information about EBS is available at www.ebs.com About ICAP: ICAP is the world's largest interdealer broker and following the acquisition ofthe BrokerTec fixed income securities businesses is the world's leadingelectronic broker of fixed income securities with a daily average transactionvolume in excess of $1 trillion, 50% of which is electronic. The Group is activein the wholesale market for OTC derivatives, fixed income securities, moneymarket products, foreign exchange, energy, credit and equity derivatives. Formore information go to www.icap.com This information is provided by RNS The company news service from the London Stock Exchange

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