By Liz Hoffman
GFI Group Inc. shareholders rejected a buyout proposal from CME
Group Inc. and GFI management, according to people familiar with
the matter, opening the door for rival BGC Partners Inc. to press
its own hostile bid for the company.
CME's $5.85-a-share bid failed to get enough votes at a
shareholder meeting Friday in New York. CME had planned to keep
GFI's software businesses and sell back the brokerage, a middleman
to Wall Street banks, to a group of GFI executives.
Bloomberg earlier reported on the vote.
BGC, run by Cantor Fitzgerald chief Howard Lutnick, has made a
competing, $6.10-a-share tender offer for all of GFI, in which it
owns a 13.5% stake. That offer expires Tuesday. BGC has made its
bid contingent on getting two-thirds of GFI's board seats, a
condition the existing directors have resisted.
BGC and CME had been engaged in a bidding war over GFI since
last summer, a fight that had exacerbated a rivalry between the two
firms. Two shareholder advisory firms Institutional Shareholder
Services Inc. and Glass, Lewis & Co., advised against the
CME/management bid.
Write to Liz Hoffman at liz.hoffman@wsj.com
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