The Boston Options Exchange (BOX), a facility of the Boston Stock Exchange that would become the sixth U.S. options market, is expecting to begin operations by the end of the year, provided the final approvals are obtained.
"This would be a fully electronic exchange. But we would be only the second electronic options exchange," Ken Leibler, president and chief executive of the Boston Stock Exchange, told Traders Magazine.
"We will have a unique exchange. We will have no specialists, with a fully transparent book," he added.
Leibler and the BSE have been working on the exchange for some two years and have already gone through a comment period, a period in which it incorporated many of the suggestions of the regulators and public into their revised proposal. Recently, BOX submitted its delegation and options plan. After this second comment period, BOX officials hope that the SEC might give final approval sometime in October or November.
Internalization
The Chicago Board Options Exchange (CBOE) has filed various objections to the BOX plan. Specifically, CBOE has been critical of Box's internalization proposal. CBOE officials have threatened to revise their options exchange, adopting an internalization approach similar to the one used by BOX.
