As the companies continue to address regulatory concerns about their proposed merger, Jacksonville-based Black Knight Inc. and Intercontinental Exchange Inc. announced an agreement July 17 to sell Black Knight’s Optimal Blue data subsidiary.
The companies said Black Knight will sell Optimal Blue to a subsidiary of Constellation Software Inc. for $700 million.
This is the second deal to sell a Black Knight subsidiary to Constellation to address the Federal Trade Commission’s antitrust concerns about ICE’s acquisition of Black Knight.
The companies announced a deal in March to sell Black Knight’s loan origination technology business called Empower to Constellation.
However, two days after that deal was announced, the FTC said it was filing an administrative complaint to block ICE’s acquisition of Black Knight, saying the merger would give ICE too much control over the U.S. mortgage technology business.
Black Knight’s core business is providing processing services for mortgage lenders.
Atlanta-based ICE is best known as operator of the New York Stock Exchange but it also has a large mortgage technology division.
After filing its administrative complaint in March, the FTC filed a complaint in April in federal court seeking an injunction to block the merger.
An evidentiary hearing on the FTC’s request for an injunction is set to begin July 24 in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California in San Francisco.
The FTC’s administrative case will not be heard until a federal judge rules on the injunction. An evidentiary hearing before an FTC administrative law judge was scheduled for July 12, but that case was postponed until September.
Optimal Blue provides product, pricing and eligibility technology for the market.
Black Knight acquired majority control of the company in 2020 as part of a partnership and bought out the other partners in 2022.