By Alexander Osipovich Sept. 22, 2019 10:23 pm ET IEX Group Inc. will abandon its struggling listings effort after the upstart exchange’s only listed company decided to jump ship, people familiar with the matter said.
IEX made the decision after its only listed company, Interactive Brokers Group Inc., IBKR 0.75% decided to switch back to Nasdaq, the people said. The Greenwich, Conn.-based online brokerage is expected to publicly announce the decision to switch its listing exchange soon. Interactive Brokers became IEX’s first listed company a year ago. It is now leaving because of concerns about how its shares have traded on IEX, including wider bid-ask spreads, the people said. Such spreads are the difference between the buying and selling price of a stock. When they widen, investors pay more to trade in and out of a company’s shares.
IEX offered NYSE- and Nasdaq-listed companies steep discounts on their listing fees if they switched over. But the effort was marred by delays and the IEX listings team went through several management changes.