When the New York Stock Exchange announced plans to merge with Archipelago and become a publicly traded company, observers hailed it as “the most sweeping change” in the Big Board’s 212-year history. Nasdaq quickly followed suit with its own pact with Instinet, as both exchanges moved even deeper into the electronic trading age.
How will these transactions affect the companies that list on the exchange? Not much, experts say. While the NYSE recently proposed a number of clarifications to its governance standards, most attorneys say this amounts to tinkering and tightening of existing requirements rather than wholesale changes.
