NYSE cutting comparison fees

By: Ray Pellecchia

File Under: NYSE

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Some very good news for clearing firms and the brokers and customers who do business with them: effective 1 Jan. 2008, we're significantly cutting the fees charged for trades submitted to the On-Line Comparison System (OCS) for trade-date comparison. I understand that smaller member firms, in particular, will benefit from our eliminating the $10,000 annual fee to connect to the system.

According to this rule filing, "It has recently been the Exchange's experience that the revenues derived from OCS access fees and usage fees have exceeded the Exchange's costs in maintaining the system. As such, the fee revisions are intended to more closely align the revenues derived from OCS fees with the actual cost of running OCS."

So here's what we're doing in response:

-- Cutting the charge for submitting transactions for trade-date comparison to 10 cents per transaction, from 15 cents.
-- Completely eliminating the $10,000-per-firm annual fee for connecting to the OCS (which would have been charged in January).

The timing is nice, but this is no holiday present; rather, I see it as one of a number of steps we're taking to make sure our services are priced most competitively.