What Is the Intercontinental Exchange? Intercontinental Exchange (ICE) establishes, operates, acquires and grows global marketplaces for trading and clearing commodities, derivatives, shares, fixed income, ETFs and other financial products. ICE marketplaces also play a key role in capital formation for companies across the globe. In finance, an exchange of futures for physicals (EFP) is a transaction between two parties in which a futures contract on a commodity is exchanged for the actual physical good. This transaction involves a privately negotiated exchange of a futures position for a corresponding position in the underlying physical. Bid for London Stock Exchange. In March 2016, ICE announced plans to bid for the London Stock Exchange Group PLC (LSE), which had already been exploring a possible merger with the Frankfurt, Germany-based Deutsche Boerse AG. Deutsche Boerse offered $30 billion in an all-stock bid for 54.4% of the merged company,