http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-11-11/brokers-attack-sec-s-plan-as-trojan-horse-designed-to-hurt-them.html
Wall Street brokers are in rebellion against a plan to test ways of encouraging more trading of the smallest U.S. stocks, saying the effort was hijacked by exchanges seeking an edge over their rivals.
The Securities and Exchange Commission’s pilot program is meant to spur trades in about 30 percent of publicly traded U.S. companies. One of its provisions -- called a trade-at rule -- is really a stealth attempt to hurt brokers that run private trading systems that compete with the likes of the New York Stock Exchange, representatives from JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM) and Citigroup Inc. (C) said yesterday at an industry conference.
“The exchanges who have a hand in this and seek to benefit from the onerous version of a trade-at basically put the screws to us,” Michael Masone, legal counsel for equities at Citigroup, said at an event sponsored by the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association.
Supporters of the one-year pilot program, including lawmakers in Congress, say it will encourage market makers to buy and sell shares by making each transaction potentially more profitable. This, the theory goes, could stimulate initial public offerings because investment banks would have more money to bankroll research departments to tout newly public companies.
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