The Atlanta offices of IntercontinentalExchange.
LONDON — The Intercontinental Exchange, the owner of the New York Stock Exchange, said on Tuesday that it was considering making a competing offer for the London Stock Exchange Group.
The announcement came a week after the London Stock Exchange and Deutsche Börse said they were in talks on a possible all-share merger, the third time the two big European exchanges have contemplated a tie-up since 2000. It also followed news reports on Monday that the IntercontinentalExchange, which is known as ICE, might be considering a competing bid.
ICE did not provide details on Tuesday of what it might be willing to pay for the London Stock Exchange, saying it had yet to approach the exchange’s board.
“No decision has yet been made as to whether to pursue such an offer,” ICE said in a news release. “There can be no certainty that any offer will be made, nor as to the terms on which any offer will be made.”
The possibility of an offer for the London Stock Exchange came just over eight months after ICE, which is based in Atlanta, spun out Euronext, which operates stock exchanges across Europe, in an initial public offering in June. Euronext was acquired as part of an international push by the New York Stock Exchange in 2007, before ICE took over the two exchanges.
It also followed ICE agreeing to buy the Interactive Data Corporation, a big publisher of financial data, for about $5.2 billion in October.
Deutsche Börse itself tried to acquire the parent of the New York Stock Exchange before ICE, but it dropped those plans in 2012 after European antitrust regulators threatened to block the deal.
Later that year, IntercontinentalExchange agreed to buy NYSE Euronext for about $8.2 billion. The acquisition was approved by European regulators in November 2013.
On Friday, Deutsche Börse and the London Stock Exchange provided more details about their “merger of equals,” saying the combined company would most likely be based in London and be led by the German exchange’s top executive, Carsten Kengeter. Xavier Rolet would step down from his role as chief executive of the London Stock Exchange.
The London Stock Exchange-Deutsche Börse merger would create a giant in an industry that has rapidly consolidated. It would also allow London, which has served as a financial gateway to Europe, to maintain economic ties to the Continent, even as Britons are set to vote in June on whether to leave the European Union.
The companies have said any potential merger would not be conditioned on the outcome of the June 23 referendum, but a decision by Britain to leave the European Union could “well affect the volume or nature of the business conducted in the different financial centers served by the combined group.”
