SE vs CME Comparison

Sea started as a gaming business, Garena, but in 2015 expanded into e-commerce. Sea operates Southeast Asia's largest e-commerce company, Shopee, in terms of gross merchandise value. Shopee is a hybrid consumer-to-consumer and business-to-consumer marketplace platform operating in Indonesia, Taiwan, Vietnam, Thailand, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Brazil. For Garena, Free Fire is the key revenue-generating game. Sea's third business, Monee, provides lending, payment, digital banking, and insurance services. As of March 2025, Forrest Li, the founder, chair, and CEO, owned 59.1% of the voting power. Tencent owned 18.5% of issued shares with no voting power.

Based in Chicago, CME Group operates exchanges giving investors, suppliers, and businesses the ability to trade futures and derivatives based on interest rates, equity indexes, foreign currencies, energy, metals, and commodities. The Chicago Mercantile Exchange was founded in 1898 and in 2002 completed its IPO. Since then, CME Group has consolidated parts of the industry by merging with crosstown rival CBOT Holdings in 2007 before acquiring Nymex Holdings in 2008 and NEX in 2018. In addition, the company has a 27% stake in S&P Dow Jones Indexes, making the Chicago Mercantile Exchange the exclusive venue to trade and clear S&P futures contracts. Through CME's acquisition of NEX, it also expanded into cash foreign exchange, fixed-income trading, and collateral optimization.