The South China Morning Post said in its article that IntercontinentalExchange's (ICE) acquisition of NYSE Euronext will have the newly-merged company divest off some assets.

ICE is a commodities exchange in the US. Heaquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, it is an operator of regulated clearing houses and regulated exchanges for currency, emissions, equity index products, energy and agricultural credit.

ICE recently completed its USD10.9 billion acquisition of the New York bourse on the first day of November. The acquisition also saw ICE acquiring control of Europe's top two derivatives market Liffe.

The combined company will begain trading under the tick symbol "ICE" tomorrow, Wednesday.

In an interview conducted on Thursday, ICE chief executive officer Jeffrey Sprecher said his company would reveal its plans of divesting and retaining assets of NYSE. ICE's announcement was expected to be done within days. In December 2012, ICE had already expressed its wishes to cut a major chunk of USD450 million in expenditures the newly-combined company incurred by the second year once it has finalized its merger. According to the company website, NYSE has 2,993 employees, while ICE had said in a recent regulatory filing that it has a staff of 1,121 as of September 30.

The combined company will begain trading under the tick symbol "ICE" tomorrow, Wednesday, Sprecher said.

ICE had disclosed plans to exit from Euronext, which would include bourses of Brussels and Lisbon, Paris and Amsterdam.

Sprecher is a known critic of the function of the equity markets in the US. He said problems that had been incurred by fragmentation, regulation and rapid advances of technology could be addressed by NYSE. Sprecher is known to eliminate the trading floors of his company's acquired stock exchanges. However, Sprecher promised to keep the NYSE trading floor open.

"The market needs to embrace change, but somebody's got to stand up and take a leadership role and hopefully others will line up behind us and help support a vision," Sprecher said.