Maple Group, the consortium of 13 financial institutions looking to take control of the company that owns the Toronto Stock Exchange is extending its offer for about another month.
The offer will now be good until Feb. 29. It had been set to expire Tuesday.
Maple says it has made numerous submissions to regulators in an effort to get the approvals it needs to complete the deal, which values the TMX Group X-T at roughly $3.8-billion.
As part of its bid, Maple plans to buy all of Alpha Trading, an alternative trading system owned by the major players in the Canadian securities industry including the big banks, and CDS Inc., a clearing and depository firm, and add them to TMX Group to create a bigger Canadian-based exchange.
Approval by Canada’s Competition Bureau is a key regulatory hurdle to the deal, and regulators have been concerned about the agreement giving the organization too much control of the prices of stock trades and other fees.
The CDS pricing model is among the submissions that Maple group has made to regulators, as well as proposed remedies to address concerns regarding equities trading, it said.
The investors in the Maple Group include 13 of Canada’s largest financial heavyweights including the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board, the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan, several of the big banks and Manulife.
