A team of executives from Nasdaq, Inc., operator of the world’s second largest stock exchange, plans to visit the Lone Star State as the firm contemplates relocating electronic trading systems out of New Jersey.
The Dallas-Morning News initially reported the story, after which Texas Governor Greg Abbott confirmed the talks.
He wrote in a tweet Tuesday night, “I’ve been talking with the Nasdaq stock exchange about moving some of their operations to Texas. They want to flee high taxes. I let them know that we just passed a constitutional amendment banning an income tax in Texas.”
Driving the move is a proposal in the New Jersey legislature to enact a quarter-cent tax on all financial transactions. Both the Nasdaq and New York Stock exchanges have signaled that they will move electronic trading operations out of New Jersey if the tax is enacted, The Wall Street Journal reported September 11.
NYSE conducted an exercise last week to run one of its exchanges from a backup site in Illinois, in order to “demonstrate our ability to move all of our exchanges’ primary matching systems out of the state.”
Texas Governor Abbott has offered the Nasdaq the opportunity to run its exchanges on wind power out of West Texas, a proposal that could appeal to environmentally conscientious New Yorkers.
In a statement, Nasdaq Vice President of Communications Joe Christinat said, “We are assessing all options, but our No. 1 priority is protecting the U.S. capital markets and its investors.”
