Baltic Exchange in talks with suitors

The Singapore Exchange has announced it had submitted an indicative offer for the City-based exchange

Traders at the Baltic Exchange in 1969 - the market is now open to offers (Getty)

The Baltic Exchange, the 270- year-old hub of the global shipping market, is in talks with potential buyers after receiving a number of “exploratory approaches”.

The news came after the Singapore Exchange announced yesterday that it had submitted an indicative offer for the City-based exchange, one of the last still owned by its members, which range from shipping companies to brokers, trading houses and cargo interests such as oil majors. The London Metal Exchange and the energy experts Platts, as well as the Intercontinental Exchange (ICE) and US commodity and derivatives giant CME, are also believed to be interested. Analysts reckon it could be worth around £84m.

As well as producing daily benchmark indices and rates for freight contracts, the Baltic Exchange in effect regulates the market through a code of conduct based on its motto, “our word is our bond”.

Its chairman Guy Campbell stressed yesterday that talks “may very well lead nowhere, in which case we shall continue with business as usual”.

The exchange dates back to 1744 when shipowners and merchants took to meeting in a coffee house near the Bank of England; it became the Virginia and Baltick coffee house. In 1992 three people died in an IRA bomb attack at the exchange.