U.S. Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA) is urging the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to conduct a robust review of the proposed acquisition of Black Knight, a data and analytics company, by the Intercontinental Exchange (ICE), a data and market infrastructure company that owns the New York Stock Exchange.
Waters, chair of the House Financial Services Committee, sent a letter to FTC chair Lina Khan, expressing concern about the potential effects of the proposed merger on consumers, including higher prices in the overall housing and mortgage markets and negative effects on market conditions due to decreased competition.
In addition to running the NYSE, ICE, and Black Knight, are among the leaders in the technology market that handles mortgage originations and mortgage servicing, as well as consumer rate pricing, registry and consumer data repository, and consumer data and marketing activities.
“Combined, this merger would make ICE the largest mortgage services company in the housing ecosystem based on market capitalization. If this deal closed as proposed, the resulting conglomerate could exert significant market power over loan pricing for consumers, access to and sale of consumer data, and mortgage software pricing. Moreover, a combined ICE and Black Knight could harm small lenders that rely on vendors for their technology needs by significantly disincentivizing responsible innovation and inhibiting vendor competition given the dominant market share of ICE,” Waters wrote to Khan.