
Turning up the heat
Nasdaq OMX boss Bob Greifeld is dialing up his relentless pursuit of a hook-up with archrival New York Stock Exchange.
Greifeld, along with partner IntercontinentalExchange CEO Jeffrey Sprecher, hosted a town hall-style meeting with about 60 Big Board investors to tout the merits of his exchange’s merger offer over that of Germany’s Deutsche Boerse.
The meeting, held at Nasdaq’s Times Square headquarters, kicked off on the same day that Greifeld lobbed a strongly-worded letter to investors, accusing the NYSE Euronext board of rushing through its merger with Deutsche Boerse while brushing off Nasdaq/ICE’s higher offer.
“The NYSE Euronext board has rushed to its own judgement without a willingness to consider the facts available to them,” the Nasdaq/ICE letter read.
Nasdaq is demanding that the NYSE board take its offer seriously and meet before a July 7 vote by NYSE shareholders to approve the DB merger.
The Nasdaq stock-and-cash offer for NYSE is valued at $42.25 a share, at this point a roughly 13 percent premium to DB’s $39.23 bid.
However, NYSE has maintained that it prefers to merge with DB because it believes that the antitrust hurdles for Nasdaq to complete are too great to surmount.
The NYSE argues that its voting deadline to approve was set according to German law.
Greifeld’s roughly two-hour-long meeting was attended by so-called merger arbitrageurs — a key base of investors, who bet on the likelihood that a proposed merger will be consummated, sources told The Post. The CEO is trying to court that group to gather more support for his counter-offer.
Some NYSE investors, who attended Nasdaq’s meeting just a few minutes after meeting with top Big Board officials, still believed that they needed more clarity on the terms of Nasdaq’s financing for its bid, souces told The Post.
Those questions also included concerns about how Nasdaq planned to pass muster with antitrust regulators. mark.decambre@nypost.com

