UPDATE 1-CBOE says aims to launch new C2 platform in August
NEW YORK, Jan 8 (Reuters) - The Chicago Board Options Exchange, which is transforming into a shareholder-owned company, said on Thursday it aims to launch its new electronic options platform in August, pending regulatory approval.
"August is the time-frame that we're going to be prepared for," Edward Tilly, executive vice president of the biggest U.S. options exchange, told reporters at a luncheon.
"We'd be surprised if it got through the entire process before August," he said of the platform, called "C2".
Tilly said CBOE aims to file its application for C2 to be a self regulatory organization, or SRO, to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission in the next 30 to 45 days. "We have worked through a great many of the details with the SEC already," he said.
C2 is intended to compliment CBOE's hybrid platform, which features both electronic and open auction trading of options. C2 will trade all of CBOE's existing products, company executives said.
William Brodsky, the chief executive, repeated he is optimistic CBOE's protracted legal dispute with former Chicago Board of Trade members would end this year in a Delaware court. See: [ID:nN06442890]
A court ruling would allow CBOE to continue as a for-profit shareholder-owned firm, conduct an initial public offering, or consider a merger with another entity.
"It doesn't mean that we are just the object of a takeover," Brodsky said at the restaurant luncheon. "We have plenty of money in the bank and ... products that are second to none in the world, so we don't have to be some subsidiary to somebody." (Reporting by Jonathan Spicer; Editing by Andre Grenon)
