Nasdaq has agreed to acquire Adenza, a maker of software used by banks and brokerages, in a $10.5 billion cash-and-stock deal, people familiar with the matter said.
The deal furthers Nasdaq CEO Adena Friedman’s efforts to transform her company from an operator of marketplaces—whose income fluctuates with trading volumes—to a more tech-centric company with steadier revenue.
If completed, the Adenza deal would represent the biggest acquisition in Nasdaq’s history.
The seller in the transaction is private-equity firm Thoma Bravo, which is poised to get a large stake in Nasdaq as part of the transaction, the people said.
Nasdaq and Thoma Bravo are expected to announce the deal later Monday.
Adenza provides software to help manage trading, risk management and post-trade processing in markets such as currencies, fixed income and derivatives. Its technology also streamlines the process of reporting data to regulators, a task that has become increasingly time consuming for banks due to the Dodd-Frank Act and other rules imposed after the 2008 financial crisis.
Based in London and New York, Adenza says its clients include the majority of banks that regulators have deemed systemically important.
Thoma Bravo hasn’t disclosed how much it paid for the businesses that make up Adenza. The company is the result of the 2021 merger of two firms, Calypso Technologies and AxiomSL. The private-equity firm acquired AxiomSL in 2020. The next year, Thoma Bravo merged Calypso into AxiomSL and renamed the combined firm Adenza.
