Silver Lake Partners is reducing its stake in Nasdaq Stock Market Inc., according to an SEC filing today. The private equity firm sold 700,000 shares in Nasdaq Aug. 17-18 at per-share prices that ranged from $29.50 to $30.20 to raise a total of $20.1 million, reducing its stake in Nasdaq to 730,250 shares from 1.43 million shares.
Revelation of the stock sale came a day after reports that Silver Lake was mulling a sale of agency broker Instinet LLC nine months after paying $208 million to acquire it. Silver Lake received the Nasdaq shares as part of its overall purchase of Instinet last December. In that deal, Nasdaq paid $935 million for Instinet's Inet electronic trading platform and sold off the other Instinet units, including the agency brokerage business to Silver Lake and Instinet's commission-recapture unit, Lynch, Jones & Ryan, which was acquired by Bank of New York for $174 million.
