New York Stock Exchange shares jump in debut

Shares in the venerable New York Stock Exchange (NYX) jumped almost 25% Wednesday, closing at $80 a share in their first day of trading.

Billions of shares of stock trade daily on the famous floor of the NYSE. But for the first time since this capitalist icon was born in 1792 under a Buttonwood tree on Wall Street, investors today can buy and sell shares of the exchange itself.

The new, profit-driven firm, valued at roughly $10.2 billion, will be called NYSE Group. Its shares will trade just like other corporate giants, such as IBM and Coca-Cola, Overnight, the NYSE went from an exchange dominated by human brokers to one that offers investors a choice of executing trades with or without human intervention.

Drastic changes at the venerable institution — best known for its human-touch, auction-style stock trading — are necessary if the NYSE is to survive in a cut-throat trading world increasingly dominated by computers. "This is an historic day for the Exchange, our customers, and investors," CEO John Thain said in a statement Tuesday. "This merger transforms and modernizes the NYSE with a growth strategy for the future."

China's central bank to integrate forex trading systems - report

The People's Bank of China (PBoC), the central bank, is planning to integrate in the second half of 2006 the country's traditional foreign exchange trading system with a system initiated last year, in a bid to improve trading efficiency and facilitate monitoring, the official China Securities Journal reported, citing a source familiar with the issue. In May last year allows domestic spot trading in eight pairs of foreign currencies, but is separate from yuan trading.
The eight pairs of foreign currencies are namely the euro against the US dollar, the Australian dollar against the US dollar, sterling against the US dollar, the US dollar against the Swiss franc, the US dollar against the Hong Kong dollar, the US dollar against the Canadian dollar, the US dollar against the Japanese yen and the euro against the yen.

The decade-old China Foreign Exchange Trade System on the interbank market currently trades just four currency pairs -- the yuan against the euro, the yen, the US dollar and Hong Kong dollar.

The combination of the two systems will allow swaps and futures trading, as well as spot trading in the yuan against other foreign currencies, the report said.
China is speeding up reforms in the capital markets after revaluing the yuan by 2.1 pct to the dollar and scrapping an 11-year-old peg or managed float linked to a basket of currencies last July.
It also launched an OTC system in the interbank foreign exchange market, allowing two participants to make currency trades based on credit without the intervention of a third party and introduced a market-making system in January.