Intercontinental Exchange

Intercontinental Exchange, Inc. operates exchanges, including the NYSE, and clearing houses. It also built a mortgage-technology stack by buying Ellie Mae and, after a long review, Black Knight.

Exchange market data and connectivity are classic bottleneck products. Brokers pay the incumbent exchange for the data they must have to trade. Fee increases are challenged as excessive pricing by a dominant venue, a theory US courts treat cautiously after cases like Trinko, and that European venues still litigate.

The Black Knight acquisition combined the largest mortgage origination software with a major servicing platform. The FTC sued. ICE settled with divestitures designed to keep a second loan-origination system alive. That remedy is the live fact: whether the divested product actually competes.

Listings on the NYSE are a two-sided market of issuers and traders. Rebates to brokers for order flow, and the data those orders create, are the equity-market version of self-preferencing.

Market-data fees are a durable complaint against incumbent exchanges.

The Black Knight remedy depends on a divested origination system remaining a real alternative.

Clearing-house membership rules can exclude smaller firms from the only usable clearing venue.

Combining origination, servicing, and data gives one vendor the mortgage workflow.

Homebuyers do not pick the loan software. Their lender does. Less competition there shows up as fewer lender choices and slower closings.

Investors pay for market data inside brokerage fees. The exchange fee is buried.