IEX Group Takes Next Step in Growth Journey with the Announcement of Its First Options Exchange
NEW YORK – 9/16/24 – IEX Group, Inc. (IEX), today announced that it will launch a U.S. options exchange to partner with liquidity providers to uniquely tackle risk management challenges experienced in the options markets, pending regulatory approvals. This new options exchange will bring IEX’s suite of order protection innovations to better address the needs of market makers.
IEX President, Bryan Harkins, commented on the planned launch, “We are focused on understanding the challenges of our Members and having discussions with market participants to guide our entry into the options market. IEX’s experience and expertise in understanding the needs of liquidity providers provides a great foundation as we begin to offer options market makers a set of tools designed to drive performance.”
The proposed options exchange will be an electronic venue that will provide access to the entire multi-listed options market while relying on a pro-rata model. This will be the first time that IEX’s proprietary solutions for risk management and markout optimization will be available for U.S. options trading, after achieving success in equities.
“IEX spent the last decade innovating to build technology that is designed to protect liquidity providers, and we have now added a team of leaders with deep multi-asset expertise that can help guide IEX through our next stage of growth,” said IEX Founder and CEO Brad Katsuyama. “We have been encouraged by the conversations this team has had with market makers about moving into the options market which underscores the opportunity for us to deepen our relationships with clients and to further improve execution quality in US markets by expanding into options.”
Proven Industry Leaders Join IEX to Drive Next Era of Growth
This launch builds on IEX’s announcement of several key leadership appointments earlier this year, including the addition of Bryan Harkins as IEX Group president and John Palmer to lead its efforts to build out its offerings and technology to serve new markets. Palmer will serve as head of options and lead the new exchange. He will continue reporting to President Bryan Harkins, who will oversee both IEX’s equities exchange and the new options exchange.
IEX also announced today that it has brought on another senior capital markets operator, Ivan Brown, who will play a key role in IEX’s plans to bring a highly differentiated trading venue to the options market. Brown will lead business development and product design for the new options exchange. He joins IEX after 15 years in financial markets leadership at the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE), where he most recently served as head of options and business development. In that role, Ivan led the NYSE’s options business, including overall strategy and development, product development, and trading floor operations, and was ultimately responsible for driving revenue and market share growth for the NYSE Options platform during his tenure.
“Bryan, John, and Ivan are proven operators who have built successful trading platforms across asset classes,” said IEX Co-Founder and COO Ronan Ryan. “We are committed to bringing together the best people in the trading industry to disrupt the status quo in options trading with a unique market architecture, highly differentiated products, and deep commitment to client relationships.”
IEX plans to work closely with options industry participants to address the unique risk management-related challenges that currently exist in the options market. It will also require minimal effort for current Members of its equities exchange to be onboarded to this new venue.
“We are excited to enter this space and work with some great brands to deliver unique value and make better markets,” said John Palmer, IEX’s new head of options.
Founded by the buyside, IEX built the first U.S. equities exchange to power its order types with a machine learning-based mathematical formula, known as the Signal, that is designed to drive order protection. IEX also introduced D-Limit, the only displayed order type designed to obtain pre-trade price improvement, enabling Members to achieve prices better than their initial limit price. Over $3.5 trillion of notional value has been traded using D-Limit since inception. Among U.S. equities exchange operators today, IEX captures 2.5-3% market share and offers superior performance thanks to its unique features and order types. By many industry metrics, IEX offers best-in-class performance for liquidity providers.
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ABOUT IEX
IEX (IEX Group, Inc.) is an exchange operator and technology company dedicated to innovating for performance in capital markets. Founded in 2012, IEX launched a new kind of securities exchange in 2016 that combines a transparent business model and unique architecture designed to protect investors. Today, IEX applies its proprietary technology and experience to drive performance across asset classes, serve all investors, and advocate for transparent and competitive markets. Learn more at iex.io.
