Members Exchange (MEMX), a market operator founded by members to benefit all investors, announces last week it received approval from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to operate a national securities exchange.
Founded in 2019, MEMX is on a mission is to increase competition, improve operational transparency, reduce fixed costs, and simplify the execution of equity trading in the U.S. The founding members of MEMX include Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Charles Schwab, Citadel Securities, E*TRADE, Fidelity Investments, Morgan Stanley, TD Ameritrade, UBS, and Virtu Financial. Speaking about the approval, Jonathan Kellner, CEO of Members Exchange, stated:
“We are excited to earn SEC approval in this challenging environment and appreciate the Commission’s thoughtful and timely review of our application. This achievement is the result of our team’s great diligence and represents a major step towards launching an exchange designed for all investors.”
MEMX, whose application was published by the SEC on October 31, 2019, added that it continues to expect to go live in the third quarter of this year. Platform testing and member certification will begin later this quarter. The approval from the SEC comes just a couple of months after MEMX secured an undisclosed amount during its latest strategic funding round, which was led by J.P. Morgan, Goldman Sachs Group, Inc., and Jane Street Capital, LLC.
Jamil Nazarali, Chairman of the Members Exchange Board of Directors, shared at the time that the funds were a “strong endorsement of the tremendous progress” that the MEMX team has achieved over the past year. MEMX will begin onboarding trading members later this month and plans to go live as a U.S. equity exchange on July 24, 2020.