End of an era for New York exchange

NEW YORK—

With a mixture of vision and nostalgia, the seat owners of the New York Stock Exchange voted yesterday to acquire Archipelago Holdings Inc., a deal that will transform the 213- yearold Big Board into a for- profit company with high- tech trading capabilities. More than 95 per cent of the voting members approved the $9 billion ( U. S.) transaction, according to the NYSE. More than 90 per cent of the exchange’s 1,366 seats were represented in the vote, tallied in the exchange’s sixthfloor conference room, considered a Wall Street institution.

“ There certainly was some nostalgia there,” John Thain, chief executive of the NYSE, said in a conference call with reporters. ‘‘A lot of attendees were members for many, many years, and they wanted to be present at this historic transaction and say that they were there.’’

Archipelago shareholders, meeting in Chicago, approved the transaction earlier yesterday, though the margin of the vote was not disclosed. The acquisition, expected to close in late January, will create a new publicly held corporation, NYSE Group Inc., with the exchange and Archipelago becoming divisions of the company. The new stock will be listed on the NYSE as NYX one day after the deal closes. A secondary stock offering has been tentatively set for late February or March, Thain said.

Its storied history and iconographic status aside, the NYSE has been under heavy competitive pressure from the Nasdaq Stock Market and other electronic trading platforms in the past decade. While the exchange prides itself on its floor auctions, which help reduce price volatility, modern stock traders have been drawn to Nasdaq’s transaction speeds, where a penny price difference could mean thousands of dollars made or lost. Some of that competitive pressure came from Archipelago itself, which has increased its share of NYSE- listed stock trades in recent years. But the exchange has also seen intense competition from other electronic trading platforms.