Summit Notebook
Exclusive outtakes from industry leaders
Being public ain’t all it’s cracked up to be
IPOs can be very tempting for exchanges, allowing members big payouts and giving the exchanges more financial flexibility to take on new markets.
In the last few years, the majority of the biggest players in the space, from New York Stock Exchange operator NYSE Euronext, and Nasdaq OMX, to Chicago Merc operator CME Group and InterContinentalExchange have gone public.
Several of the few non-public trading venues left, including options exchange CBOE, and electronic venues Liquidnet and Direct Edge, still have IPO plans.
But being public comes at a price — stressed-out employees with options and investors watching plunging stocks. According to the Dow Jones Global Exchanges Index, exchanges’ shares have fallen by nearly half since last May.
Short sellers getting you down? Call an exchange exec
As if providing a trading platform, prestige and market data weren’t enough, stock exchanges are facing growing demands from the CEOs of their listed companies to help halt their stocks’ slide, BATS Trading CEO Joe Ratterman said at the Reuters Global Exchanges and Trading Summit on Monday.
Ratterman said he has been hearing of company bosses he calls “issuer-CEOs” giving the high-ups at rival exchanges, the New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq, an earful when the stocks of those companies come under attack from short sellers.
