Deutsche Boerse lowers key hurdle for merger with LSE

The Frankfurt stock exchange said Monday that it has decided to lower a key hurdle for its planned merger with the London Stock Exchange (LSE) to go ahead and also extend the dateline for its shareholders to agree to the deal.

Deutsche Boerse said that only 60 percent of shareholders must now agree to swap their shares for the deal to go ahead, instead of the original minimum acceptance threshold of 75 percent.

In addition, the deadline for Deutsche Boerse shareholders to swap their shares for new shares in the merged company had been extended from July 12 until July 26, the group said in a statement.

Earlier, Deutsche Boerse had explained it was considering lowering the minimum acceptance threshold for technical reasons in order to allow index funds to participate in the offer.

Index funds, which represent up to 15 percent of Deutsche Boerse shares, are only technically capable of tendering their shares after the minimum acceptance threshold has been reached.

And the replacement of the shares takes two days.

However, since most institutional shareholders only tendered their shares on the last day of the initial offer period, it meant the respective threshold would not be achieved prior to that day. And the replacement of the shares would take place after the end of the initial offer period, Deutsche Boerse explained.

"By reducing the acceptance threshold that technical issue could be addressed," it said.