US FTC will seek to stop ICE from buying Black Knight (updated)

Black Knight

09/03/2023 19:15

(Adds FTC quote, details, background)
       WASHINGTON, March 9 (Reuters) - The U.S. Federal Trade
Commission on Thursday said it would take action aimed at
stopping New York Stock Exchange parent Intercontinental
Exchange  ICE.N  from acquiring mortgage data vendor Black
Knight  BKI.N  in a $13.1 billion deal.
    The agency said the proposed deal would mean higher costs,
less innovation and fewer choices in the process of financing
the purchase of a home.
        "This deal would reduce competition in key areas of the
mortgage process, ultimately raising costs for lenders and
homebuyers," said Patty Brink, acting deputy director of the
FTC's Bureau of Competition.
  
        The FTC voted 4-0 to bring an administrative complaint.
  
        ICE did not immediately respond to a request for
comment.
  
        The deal, announced in May, prompted worries from the
beginning that it could raise costs for consumers by giving ICE
too much pricing power in the mortgage data market that lenders
rely on. An industry group of community lenders opposed the
deal.
  
        Black Knight, which provides software, data and
analytics to the real estate and housing finance markets, is the
latest in a string of deals undertaken by ICE since 2016 to
support its mortgage-servicing business as it bets on a windfall
from automation of the home financing process.
    In 2020 ICE, in an $11 billion deal, purchased Ellie Mae, a
cloud-based platform that supports all aspects of mortgage
origination. That followed a $335 million deal for Simplifile in
2019, and the acquisition of MERS, in which ICE took a majority
stake in 2016 and bought outright in 2018.
        In February, Reuters reported that Black Knight had
decided to put its Empower loan origination software business up
for sale in a response to U.S. antitrust concerns.

 (Reporting by Diane Bartz; Editing by Mark Porter and Leslie
Adler)
 ((Diane.Bartz@thomsonreuters.com; 1 202 898 8313;))