By Josh Beckerman

CME Group Inc., the operator of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, will sell its Aurora, Ill., data center to CyrusOne Inc., part of an ongoing effort to reduce its real estate holdings.

As part of the $130 million sale, CME will enter a 15-year lease for data center space and will continue to operate its CME Globex trading platform at the site.

CME said its relationship with CyrusOne will help it provide broader services to customers in areas like disaster recovery, cloud access and data storage.

In 2012, CME reached a deal to sell most of its Chicago Board of Trade building to a consortium of real-estate companies for $151.5 million. In 2013, CME agreed to sell the Nymex Building in lower Manhattan to Brookfield Office Properties for $200 million.

In 2014, the Kansas City Board of Trade building was sold to Mariner Real Estate Management LLC. CME had owned 51% of the building, with Highwood Properties Inc. holding 49%.

CME said in early 2015 that it would close most of its futures trading pits in Chicago and New York as electronic trading has become the overwhelmingly dominant way futures contracts are bought and sold.

The Wall Street Journal has reported that CME has been of the possible bidders for London Stock Exchange Group PLC and for Baltic Exchange Ltd.

Dallas-based CyrusOne said the deal will increase its portfolio to 33 data centers.

Write to Josh Beckerman at josh.beckerman@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

March 15, 2016 21:46 ET (01:46 GMT)

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