Dallas' status as a booming financial hub nicknamed as "Y'all Street" is getting another boost.
The New York Stock Exchange unveiled plans Wednesday to reincorporate one of its electronic exchanges, NYSE Chicago, in Texas and rename it as NYSE Texas, based in Dallas, in a move expected to pit the storied stock exchange against the upstart Texas Stock Exchange at the same time the Nasdaq is growing in the region.
The Texas Stock Exchange, also based in Dallas, is getting closer to launch after filing its Form 1 registration with the Securities and Exchange Commission last month to operate as a national securities exchange.
The NYSE, part of the Intercontinental Exchange Inc., plans to launch NYSE Texas as a "fully electronic equities exchange" with a headquarters in Dallas, NYSE officials said. The relocation of the stock exchange from Chicago to Dallas is pending regulatory filings.
“As the state with the largest number of NYSE listings, representing over $3.7 trillion in market value for our community, Texas is a market leader in fostering a pro-business atmosphere,” said NYSE Group President Lynn Martin in a statement.
Martin wasn't immediately available for an interview with CoStar News and the NYSE declined to share additional information on the move. It is unclear if the move will result in a change of real estate or shift any jobs to the Lone Star State.
Meanwhile, the Texas Stock Exchange, which closed its initial capital raise at $161 million, making it the most well-capitalized exchange to ever file a Form 1, plans to launch trading in early 2026, the company said. The stock exchange has been looking for a permanent Dallas headquarters and market center after setting up a temporary space within one of its founding investors' offices.
Like NYSE Texas, the Texas Stock Exchange is expected to be a fully electronic national stock exchange without a physical trading floor. The majority of stock exchanges trade electronically.
Historic roots
Chicago's long history as a U.S. financial hub has undergone significant changes in recent years.
The Chicago Stock Exchange, founded in 1882, had its longtime office in the 40-story tower at 425 S. Financial Place, which has an alternate address of 440 S. LaSalle St. Physical trading pits closed at the Chicago Stock Exchange building in 2007.
The stock exchange’s parent company, CHX Holdings, was acquired by NYSE's parent Intercontinental Exchange for $70 million in 2018. At the time, the all-electronic Chicago Stock Exchange had 80 employees, according to Crain’s Chicago Business. Later in 2018, Bloomberg reported that about a dozen employees had been fired by the company’s new owner.
The Chicago Stock Exchange's acquisition adds another chapter to the ongoing changes along the south end of LaSalle Street — the city's historic business hub — in recent years.
Once a beehive of in-person trading within loud, chaotic trading pits, the surrounding office market has continued to shift away from its onetime core of trading, banking and other finance jobs. Major employers such as Bank of America and BMO Financial have left older properties on LaSalle Street for new trophy towers west along the Chicago River, leading to a city-backed effort to convert some older office buildings to affordable housing.
The vacant former Cboe Global Markets headquarters building at 400 S. LaSalle was sold to local developers Prime Group and Capri Interests for $12 million last year. The buyers told CoStar News that they plan to convert the wide, six-story building into a data center. Cboe said it no longer needed the building after moving its headquarters to the redeveloped Old Post Office and shifting its open-outcry trading floor to the Chicago Board of Trade Building in 2022.
The Chicago Board of Trade Building at 141 W. Jackson Blvd. is topped by a massive statue of Ceres, the Roman goddess of agriculture, in a nod to the property’s longtime trading floors where agricultural commodities and other securities once were regularly traded in open-outcry pits.
The Chicago Board of Trade Building also has been in flux in recent years, with lender-turned-owner Athene, a fund of New York-based Apollo Global Management, working with local developer R2 to re-lease large blocks of space.
Trading up
NYSE's expansion to Texas comes as rival Nasdaq is also growing in the Lone Star State, having recently named Rachel Racz as Nasdaq's new listings head for Texas, the southern United States and Latin America. Racz was born and raised in Texas with a background in the oil and gas industry.
The Nasdaq was the first exchange to have a physical presence in Texas when it opened an office in 2013, Racz said when she started her new role in September. There are more than 200 Nasdaq-listed companies, representing $1.3 trillion in market cap, that call Texas home, Racz said. Nasdaq has a regional hub in the Dallas area in Irving, Texas, according to its website.
And public companies in Texas will have more options once NYSE Texas launches, building on the exchange's 230 years of experience and providing a listing and trading venue centered "within the vibrant economy of the southwestern U.S.," NYSE said. The timeline of the launch was not disclosed.
Susan Arledge, a senior managing director in Newmark's Dallas office, said it's hard to know what the NYSE Texas might mean to Dallas in real estate terms, but it could bring new interest in office space to downtown and Uptown Dallas.
"They would have to be looking in downtown or the Uptown Dallas area, with Goldman Sachs new campus and Bank of America's new building clearly showing an appetite for financial services firms to be in these areas," Arledge, who has decades of experience helping companies with site selection, told CoStar News.
Arledge added, "Dallas doesn't have one designated financial district, but the downtown and Uptown Dallas area has The Crescent and Old Parkland and anyone who has an office in Uptown is making a statement."