Chicago Looks to the Future

Good news for Chicago, the merger of the Board and the Merc. Sun Times:

The Chicago Mercantile Exchange and Chicago Board of Trade, once fierce crosstown rivals, agreed Tuesday to join forces, with the Merc buying the CBOT for $8 billion. The deal will boost the size of what is already the world's largest exchange for futures contracts and cement Chicago's position as the center of derivatives trading. ''What'd they use to call Chicago -- the hog butcher of the world?" said Jack Sander, retired chairman of the Merc. "We are now the risk managers of the world.''

Tribune:

The deal will position the CME Group Inc., as the company will be called, on top of a surging derivatives trading industry that is growing at about 18 percent a year. That industry is a key component of increasingly competitive and rapidly consolidating global financial markets.

This is terrific news for Chicago. It will keep an industry that was invented here anchored here.

Both exchanges will be headquartered in the heart of Chicago's financial district, in the beautiful Art Deco Board of Trade building.

And the mayor unveiled Chicago's proposed logo in its bid for the 2016 Olympics.







Lookin' good.