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A fledgling Texas Stock Exchange said on Tuesday it had raised $120mn from investors including BlackRock and Citadel Securities with the aim of launching a new national rival to the New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq.
TXSE Group has raised capital from more than two dozen investors and “prominent business leaders from around the country” in hopes of becoming “the most well-capitalised exchange entrant” to seek recognition with federal regulators, James Lee, its chair and chief executive posted to LinkedIn on Tuesday evening.
The Wall Street Journal first reported that the Texas Stock Exchange was launching with Lee, a longtime financial professional in the state, at the helm and a plan to start handling its first trades in 2025 and its first listing in 2026.
A Citadel Securities spokesperson confirmed the trading firm was backing TXSE but declined to comment further. BlackRock declined to comment.
The exchange describes itself on its website as a “fully electronic, national securities exchange” that would be home to public companies and the growing exchange traded funds industry, which has amassed $8.6tn by challenging the dominance of the much larger US mutual funds market.
Texas has increasingly sought to remake itself as a hub for corporate finance. The state last year enacted a law to create the Texas Business Court as a venue for commercial cases with more than $5mn at stake, setting up an alternative to established corporate law hotspots in New York and Delaware.
The latter by far remains the state of choice to incorporate for large companies. But Delaware’s status has been targeted by Elon Musk, the Tesla chief executive whose $56bn stock pay package has been challenged in a Delaware state court.
The Texas Stock Exchange faces an uphill battle in challenging the predominant NYSE and Nasdaq, the two largest players in the US equities trading market. BlackRock, Citadel and many other large US financial institutions have previously supported new exchanges such as the Members Exchange.
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