ATLANTA, July 9 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- IntercontinentalExchange, Inc. today released the following open letter to CBOT Holdings members and stockholders:
July 9, 2007
To CBOT Members and Stockholders:
On behalf of the ICE Board and management, I want to thank you for your willingness to engage in a dialogue over the past several months and to consider our proposals. The ICE leadership team has appreciated the opportunity to discuss with you the benefits of an ICE/CBOT merger. Throughout this dynamic process, we listened to your thoughts and sought to reflect them in our proposals to your Board. We are extremely gratified to have received support from so many of you.
Despite our disappointment in the outcome, our proposal has brought many benefits for both CBOT and ICE stockholders. For CBOT stockholders, ICE's involvement has created nearly $3 billion in additional value through our willingness to recognize the true worth of your company. For ICE stockholders, we have shown our ability to leverage our position as one of the fastest growing, most global and most technologically sophisticated exchanges in the world. This process also focused attention on ICE's product diversity, our ability to manage organic growth and acquisitions, and an unfailing entrepreneurial spirit. Importantly, we demonstrated discipline and creativity in refining our offer, illustrating our ability to identify and deliver value.
ICE stockholders recognize ICE's ability to build its business by innovating and seizing growth opportunities, and we'll continue to aggressively pursue this philosophy. In doing so, we will continue to put the interests of our stockholders and customers first.
Finally, I'd like to recognize the efforts of the many ICE employees who dedicated their time and energy to the proposed transaction and to integration planning, all the while carrying out the work in our core business - as well as numerous additional strategic initiatives - that continue to produce industry-leading results.
The future winners in our industry may not be the biggest or oldest players. Success will be determined by the ability to adapt quickly to changing markets and innovate responsively in creating new products and serving customers around the globe. ICE will remain focused in these areas, and we look forward to the opportunity to work with you in the future.
Best regards,
Jeffrey C. Sprecher
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer
IntercontinentalExchange, Inc.
Safe Harbor Statement under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 Statements in this press release regarding IntercontinentalExchange's business that are not historical facts are "forward-looking statements" that involve risks and uncertainties. For a discussion of such risks and uncertainties, which could cause actual results to differ from those contained in the forward-looking statements, see the Company's Securities and Exchange Commission filings, including, but not limited to, the risk factors in the Company's Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2006, and the Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q for the quarter ended March 31, 2007, each as filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission on February 26, 2007 and May 4, 2007, respectively.
About IntercontinentalExchange
IntercontinentalExchange(R) operates the leading global, electronic marketplace for trading both futures and OTC energy contracts and the leading soft commodity exchange. ICE's markets offer access to a range of contracts based on crude oil and refined products, natural gas, power and emissions, as well as soft commodities including cocoa, coffee, cotton, ethanol, orange juice, wood pulp and sugar, in addition to currency and index futures and options. ICE(R) conducts its energy futures markets through its U.K. regulated London-based subsidiary, ICE Futures, Europe's leading energy exchange. ICE Futures offers liquid markets in the world's leading oil benchmarks, Brent Crude futures and West Texas Intermediate (WTI) Crude futures, trading nearly half of the world's global crude futures by volume of commodity traded. ICE conducts its soft commodity futures and options markets through its U.S. regulated subsidiary, the New York Board of Trade(R). For more than a century, the NYBOT(R) has provided global markets for food, fiber and financial products. ICE was added to the Russell 1000(R) Index on June 30, 2006. Headquartered in Atlanta, ICE also has offices in Calgary, Chicago, Houston, London, New York and Singapore. For more information, please visit http://www.theice.com/ and http://www.nybot.com/.
