NY Stock Exchange sold to ICE for $8.2B, 'underscores growing importance of derivatives and diminishing influence of NYSE'-Bloomberg

12/20/12, "ICE Agrees to Buy NYSE Euronext for $8.2 Billion," Bloomberg

"Merging NYSE Euronext, which owns the biggest exchanges by value of listings in the U.S., France and the Netherlands, with the second-largest futures market underscores both the growing importance of derivatives and the diminishing influence of the 220-year-old NYSE. The Big Board, once the benchmark for global free markets, has seen its share of trading in stocks listed on the exchange decline to 21 percent from 82 percent.

“Not only are they losing volume, they’re also getting squeezed in their margins because of all these competitors who have different corporate structures,” Thomas Caldwell, who oversees about $1 billion as chairman and chief executive officer of Toronto-based Caldwell Securities Ltd., said in a telephone interview. His firm owns shares of NYSE and ICE. “They’re languishing as  

everyone sits and waits for cash equity volumes to pick up,

which may or may not occur for several years.”"... via Free Republic
 



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