Winnipeg Commodities Exchange (WCE)

The Winnipeg Commodities Exchange (WCE) was Canada's only agricultural futures and options exchange and was in operation from 1887 to 2018.

The Winnipeg Commodities Excange (WCE) was founded in 1887 in Winnipeg, Manitoba, then acquired in 2007 by Atlanta-based Intercontinental Exchange, or ICE, which relocated all WCE trading functions to New York City in 2018. ICE announced that the move to New York, which required regulatory approval, was to provide customers with deeper liquidity, reduced administrative costs and a more diversified risk management pool while retaining the same contract specifications. The WCE has been handling futures contract trading since 1904 and was the first North American commodity exchange to shift to all-electronic trading when it ended open outcry in 2004.

ICE was founded in May 2000 in Atlanta, Georgia, to facilitate the electronic purchase and sale of energy commodities. ICE is an electronic exchange for trade in oil, natural gas, jet fuel, emissions, electric power, commodity derivatives and futures. It has been at the forefront of the commodities exchange market since its founding. It also facilitates the trading of foreign exchange and interest rate products, including credit default swaps.

ICE bought NYSE Euronext, the parent company of the New York Stock Exchange in 2013. The company spun off the Paris-based European stock exchange operator in June 2014 but retained ownership of NYSE. ICE has grown and diversified since its founding in 2000. It is the third largest exchange group in the world, behind Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing and the CME Group, which owns the Chicago Board of Trade and the New York Mercantile Exchange. The company owns 23 regulated exchanges and six clearing houses around the world. ICE purchased NYSE Euronext in a deal that was announced in late 2012 and closed the following year. The computerization of trading had diluted the importance of NYSE's trading floor and open outcry system, and its share of the trading volume of companies listed on its exchange had declined to 21% from 82%. The deal was initially valued at $8.4 billion, but that rose to $11 billion by the time it closed in November 2013. Since the acquisition, ICE has operated two headquarters: Atlanta and New York City.