Wednesday's Financial Winners & Losers

Updated from 2:13 p.m. EDT

Most financial stocks traded lower Wednesday, averaging a notch below the slipping broader market, despite several pieces of good news out of the sector.

One of the biggest financial winners was eSpeed (ESPD Quote), which was climbing 1.9% earlier in the day and closed up 0.4%, or 4 cents, to $9.23 in unusually heavy trading after it agreed to buy BGC Partners from bond dealer Cantor Fitzgerald for $1.22 billion in stock. The deal values eSpeed shares at a premium of $9.75 apiece and includes the issuance of some 133.9 million new shares of the online broker.

Also higher were Chicago Board of Trade (BOT Quote) and -- following a shaky start -- IntercontinentalExchange (ICE Quote) -- after the ICE struck a deal with the Chicago Board Options Exchange that effectively bolsters its hostile bid for the CBOT.

Members of the CBOT will be paid $500,000 for each of their CBOE exercise rights, but only if the former agrees to merge with ICE. The settlement, worth up to $665.5 million in total, will be funded equally by ICE and CBOE.

CBOT jumped 2.4% to $197.62 in support of the NYSE Financial Sector Index, which was up 0.5% to 9938.49. Fellow component ICE traded up 0.7%, and the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME Quote), whose recently sweetened bid for CBOT was backed by CBOT's board earlier this month, closed up 0.4% to $527.85.

The KBW Bank Index, a large-bank tracker, was up 0.4% to 117.42.