The Federal Commerce Fee has taken motion on Thursday to dam Intercontinental Alternate’s (NYSE:ICE) proposed acquisition of Black Knight (NYSE:BKI), saying the deal would scale back competitors and innovation out there for mortgage mortgage expertise and would drive up prices for lenders and homebuyers.

Black Knight (BKI) inventory fell 1.1% in Thursday afternoon buying and selling and Intercontinental Alternate (ICE) dropped 1.8%. Prior to now six months, because the deal delay dragged on, BKI shares have slipped 11%. ICE initially agreed to amass BKI in Could 2022 for ~$13B on the time.

“This deal would scale back competitors in key areas of the mortgage course of, in the end elevating prices for lenders and homebuyers,” mentioned Patty Brink, performing deputy director on the FTC’s Bureau of Competitors.

Intercontinental (ICE) owns the dominant mortgage origination system (LOS), software program used to handle paperwork and workflow required to generate a mortgage and Black Knight owns the second-largest LOS, generally known as Empower, within the U.S. The deal would additionally hurt competitors in product pricing and eligibility engines ((PPEs)) and different ancillary providers to LOS, the FTC mentioned.

Black Knight (BKI) has proposed a deal to promote Empower LOS and a few associated providers to Constellation Net Options. However the FTC, in accordance its criticism, says “the proposal doesn’t deal with the anticompetitive results out there for PPE software program and wouldn’t substitute the extreme competitors between ICE and Black Knight within the LOS market.”

Earlier this week, Bloomberg reported that the FTC was poised to file a lawsuit difficult the sale.