NEW YORK: Intercontinental Exchange Inc (ICE), the owner of the New York Stock Exchange, has reached out to eBay Inc to explore a potential combination with the e-commerce company, people familiar with the matter said on Tuesday.
The acquisition would exceed $30 billion and represent a substantial departure from ICE's focus on financial markets. The move would call on its technological expertise in running markets to extract efficiencies from eBay's marketplace platform, which connects buyers and sellers of goods around the world.