CME Group to Buy Kansas City Board of Trade for $126 Million

CME Group Inc., the world’s largest futures exchange, will buy the Kansas City Board of Trade for $126 million in cash to add a wheat contract to its products.

CME Group’s Chicago Board of Trade lists futures on soft-red winter wheat that are a lower-quality grain used in animal feed and some cookies and cakes compared with Kansas City’s hard red winter wheat, which is used to make bread and other food products. Hard red winter varieties will account for 44 percent of U.S. wheat production this year, government data show. Futures and options on the grain are the only contracts listed at the Kansas City exchange.