Markit Ends Secondary Public Offering after Selling 1.7 Million Shares

Markit (Nasdaq: MRKT) officially announced today the cessation and closure of its secondary public offering of 27,501,271 common shares at $25.75 per share, according to a Markit statement.

The second offering round included 1,754,667 shares sold by the underwriters of their option to purchase additional common shares from the selling shareholders. Markit itself did not sell any shares and did not receive any proceeds from the offering.

A number of leading financial institutions acted as joint book-running managers for the offering, including the following: BofA Merrill Lynch, Barclays, Citigroup, Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank Securities, Goldman, Sachs & Co., HSBC, J.P. Morgan, Morgan Stanley, RBC Capital Markets, UBS Investment Bank, BNP PARIBAS, Jefferies, RBS and TD Securities

Last week, Markit launched a secondary public offering of its common shares to investors. The public offering had initially approximated only 24,586,022 common shares for sale, granting underwriters the right to purchase up to approximately 1,700,000 additional common shares from the selling shareholders – both estimates were ultimately exceeded.

The share repurchase has been in the works for some time, after being framed as part of its $500 million share repurchase program, authorizing the company to purchase up to an additional $150 million of common shares over the next two years.