NYSE bought the stake in 2007 for $115m. “When we first made the investment, we thought of it as a strategic investment. What we found over time was that there weren’t a lot of strategic avenues open to us with NSE,” Leibowitz said.

He said that once it became obvious that the 5% holding was not opening the doors NYSE Euronext had hoped for, it decided to take action.

“We had a lot of respect for the management there. They run a very good business,” he said. “But it looked to us like it was turning into just a financial investment, at which point we said, ‘Well, that’s not the business we’re in.’ We decided that the best use of our capital would be to cash out and pay down the debt.”