Commodities traders in Chicago to join forces

0 Comments | USA TODAY, October, 2006 | by Matt Krantz

Lumber, pork belly, cheese, corn, soybean and wheat traders can all coexist now after commodity-trading powerhouse Chicago Mercantile Exchange agreed Tuesday to pay $8 billion for crosstown rival CBOT Holdings, parent of the Chicago Board of Trade. The deal brings together the world's largest exchanges for derivatives, including futures contracts on stocks, bonds, currencies and commodities.

The combined exchange will host trading of 9 million derivative contracts a day worth $4.2 trillion, which is larger than Germany's annual gross domestic product. The agreement, which will create a company that is 69% owned by the CME, ends more than a century of delicate competition between the two, in which they would both facilitate trading in similar commodities but rarely butt...