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Deutsche Boerse (DB1Gn.DE) is buying German-based foreign exchange trading platform 360T for 725 million euros ($796 million), the Frankfurt-based stock market operator said on Sunday.

360T is one of a handful of multi-bank, multi-user platforms which have revolutionized foreign exchange trading over the past decade and Deutsche Boerse beat U.S. commodities and currency exchange operator CME Group (CME.O) in the auction, according to sources familiar with the deal.

Deutsche Boerse said it expects significant double-digit million euro revenue synergies in the medium-term from the deal which it plans to finance via a combination of debt and equity.

With volatility, volumes and resulting returns booming in the dollar's dramatic rally over the past year, currency trading is attracting more attention and investment from banks, retail trading houses and investors.

Deutsche Boerse's Eurex and other major exchange groups have been positioning themselves to take a role in what they expect with time will be a more heavily regulated market.

But those efforts have focused largely on more complicated instruments like options and futures rather than the spot currency transactions that make up the $5 trillion a day market and in which 360T is one of the biggest non-bank players.

360T founder Carlo Koelzer is credited a decade ago with helping launch the new generation of forex platforms which allowed European companies to pick and choose in one place which banks they traded currencies with.

Data from industry publisher Euromoney shows 360T is now the third-largest such platform, behind Thomson Reuters-owned FXAll (TRI.TO), FX Connect and just ahead of Bloomberg. 360T Managing Director Alfred Schorno told Reuters earlier this year that trading on 360T was above 100 billion euros a day, although the company has since ceased to publish volume data.

360T was founded in 2000, private equity group Summit Partners took a majority stake in 2012, while peer Brockhaus had kept a 10.7 percent stake and 360T employees also retained stakes.