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Nasdaq Selling Stock

The company wants to pay back its lenders for the LSE stake.

The

Nasdaq Stock Market

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will sell 18.5 million shares to the public in a push to repay its lenders in the London Stock Exchange deal.

The stock sale will be managed by

Credit Suisse

(CSR)

and

Bank of America

(BAC)

. It was BofA that lent Nasdaq the money to buy a 15% stake in the LSE earlier this month.

Nasdaq paid $782 million to buy a big block of stock in the LSE, after the London exchange rebuffed its merger overture. BofA gave Nasdaq a $1.92 billion line of credit, some of which was used to pay for the deal.

The sale of stock by the Nasdaq comes at the same time that its big U.S. rival, the

New York Stock Exchange

(NYX)

, is planning a secondary stock offering in which some of the NYSE shareholders will sell stock. The NYSE also is trying to find a foreign exchange to buy or partner with.

On Friday, Nasdaq dropped 59 cents in postclose action to $40.61.