Intercontinental Exchange Inc ICE

Intercontinental Exchange, Inc., incorporated on March 6, 2013, is an operator of regulated exchanges, clearing houses and listings venues. The Company provides data services for commodity and financial markets. The Company's segments include Trading and Clearing segment, and Data and Listings segment. The Trading and Clearing segment includes the Company's transaction-based execution and clearing businesses. The Company's Data and Listings segment includes its subscription-based data services and securities listings businesses. The Company operates regulated marketplaces for listing, trading and clearing a range of derivatives and securities contracts across the asset classes, including energy and agricultural commodities, interest rates, equities, equity derivatives, exchange traded funds, credit derivatives, bonds and currencies. The Company offers market data services to support the trading, investment, risk management and connectivity needs of customers across a range of asset classes.

The Company's exchanges include futures exchanges in the United States, the United Kingdom, Continental Europe, Canada and Singapore, and cash equities, equity options and bond exchanges in the United States. The Company also operates over-the-counter (OTC), markets for physical energy and credit default swaps (CDS) and trade execution. To serve global derivatives markets, the Company operates central counterparty clearing houses in the United States, the United Kingdom, Continental Europe, Canada and Singapore. The Company offers a range of data services for global financial and commodity markets, including pricing and reference data, exchange data, analytics, feeds, desktops and connectivity solutions. Through its markets, clearing houses, listings and data services, it provides solutions for its customers through liquid markets, products, access to capital markets, and related services.

Derivatives Exchanges

The Company's derivatives markets provide a means for trading and managing risks associated with price volatility, securing physical delivery of certain commodities, as well as enabling investment, asset allocation and diversification. The Company conducts its derivatives business through various regulated exchanges, such as Intercontinental Exchange (ICE) Futures Europe, ICE Futures U.S., ICE Futures Canada, ICE Endex, ICE Futures Singapore, the New York Stock Exchanges (NYSE) Amex Options and NYSE Arca Options.

OTC Markets

The Company's OTC markets include both regulated and unregulated platforms for the execution of cleared and bilateral, or non-cleared, CDS instruments and bilateral energy contracts. ICE Swap Trade, Creditex Group and its subsidiaries and Creditex Brokerage provide trade execution in its CDS business and are authorized and regulated by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC). The Company offers electronic trading of contracts based on physically settled natural gas, power and refined oil products through ICE U.S. OTC Commodity Markets.

Clearing Houses

The Company operates clearing houses, each of which acts as a central counterparty. The clearing houses provide financial security for each transaction for the duration of the position by limiting counterparty credit risk. The Company's clearing houses are responsible for providing clearing services to each of its futures exchanges and certain of its clearing houses clear contracts traded outside of its execution venues. The Company's clearing houses are ICE Clear Europe, which clears ICE Futures Europe and ICE Endex futures contracts for interest rates, equity indices, energy and agriculture products, as well as ICE Futures U.S. futures contracts for energy and OTC European CDS instruments; ICE Clear U.S., which clears ICE Futures U.S. soft commodity, currency, metals, credit and domestic and equity index futures contracts; ICE Clear Credit, which clears North American, European, Asian-Pacific and Emerging Market CDS instruments; ICE Clear Canada, which clears ICE Futures Canada agricultural futures contracts; ICE Clear Netherlands, which clears Dutch equity options (which are traded on The Order Machine, an unrelated trading platform), and ICE Clear Singapore, which clears ICE Futures Singapore commodity contracts and foreign exchange (FX).

Securities Trading and Listings

The Company operates securities exchanges for the trading of cash equities, including exchange traded funds (ETFs), fixed income securities and securities options. In addition, through its listings operations, the Company offers corporate and ETF issuers access to the United States capital markets. The Company conducts its securities trading and listings business through NYSE, NYSE MKT and NYSE Arca.

Data Services

As of December 31, 2016, the Company's data business, ICE Data Services (IDS) was spread across nine asset classes at 11 exchanges and six clearing houses. The Company's data business offers three categories of services: Pricing and Analytics; Exchange Data and Desktops, and Connectivity. The Company also provides valuation, reference, instrument data and analytical services, as well as pricing and valuation services, for benchmarks, ETFs and a range of financial derivatives and clearing house positions, including ICE indices for fixed income markets.

The Company competes with CME Group, Nasdaq OMX Group, Inc., Deutsche Borse, Curve Global, EEX, BATS Global Markets, Inc., London Stock Exchange, Euronext, The Stock Exchange of Hong Kong Limited, Toronto Stock Exchange, Chicago Board Options Exchange, Inc., Bloomberg L.P., Thomson Reuters Corporation, IHSMarkit, SIX Financial, CenturyLink and Transaction Network Services.