Former NYSE Seatholders May Not Be Smiling

The NYSE has certainly transformed as an organization over the past 5 years and continues to do so with the potential deal with the Deutsche Borse.

Recall some of the key events in the past few years:

• March 7, 2006: NYSE and Archipelago complete merger, NYSE Group becomes a publicly-traded company on March 8
• April 4, 2007: NYSE Group merges with Euronext, creating NYSE Euronext
• October 1, 2008: NYSE Euronext acquires the American Stock Exchange

Despite those monumental mergers, the last few years have been quite difficult for shareholders.

Since the NYSE went public in 2006, its market cap has shrunk 21% to $9.9

NYSE Clerks in the 1990's

billion, down from $12.6 billion on that first day of trading – and that’s even as its stock sits at a 2+ year high.

With shares struggling over the past few years, look what’s happened to the value of the package seatholders got upon the closing of the NYSE/Archipelago deal. Their original package included 80,177 shares of NYX stock at $64.25/share and $300,000 in cash (shares were also subject to a lockup period).

At that time, that equated to a $5.5 million package for each seat owned. That was a nice premium from the price of the last seat ever sold in December 2005 ($3,550,000) and even from the all-time high price of $4 million in early December 2005.

However, if a seatholder happened to keep all the shares from that initial package, even with the price jump in the NYX shares yesterday, that package would now only be worth about $3.35 million today –below the price of the last NYSE seat sold. (For those of you doing the math, that's $38.10 x 80,177 shares + $300,000 in cash.)

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So although seatholders got a seemingly nice premium for their seats back when the deal closed, with the pressure on NYX shares in recent years, the value of that package isn’t looking nearly as good now.

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