North Texas is home to more than 380,000 finance professionals. That is the largest concentration of financial workers in the U.S. outside of New York.
And on Monday, the Texas Stock Exchange launched as part of a phased roll-out. NTX Now's Miranda Suarez and Ron Corning spoke with Holden Wilen, assistant managing editor for Dallas Business Journal, to discuss what Texans can expect from the new exchange.
These interview highlights have been edited for length and clarity. To hear the full conversation, click the 'listen' button above.
Corning: Explain to folks who might not know what a stock exchange actually is and what's about to start happening here.
Essentially, a stock exchange is where the traders, individuals like you and me but also big major financial firms, go and trade shares of public companies and various other kinds of particular funds every day.
The Texas Stock Exchange launched earlier this week and is seeking to compete with those bigger New York exchanges. So, it's really symbolic of the rise of finance here in Dallas and Texas, but it's also a big move nationally in terms of competition for what many people consider a very powerful duopoly.
Suarez: How would this differ from say, the New York Stock Exchange? Is this basically a chance for smaller regional companies to get in on getting traded publicly?
I think you kind of hear different things. I know that a lot of what the Texas Stock Exchange executives have talked about is, yes, a focus on the Southeast quadrant of the United States with obviously a particular focus on Texas, and helping create a bigger pipeline of companies to go public. They talk about how the number of companies that are currently publicly traded has declined in the range of 40-50%. But realistically, they're going to be looking at companies across the country.
Corning: How will this actually materially impact life in Dallas, and particularly that downtown/uptown corridor? Because this will mean more tech professionals being employed and living and working in the area. Are we going to see, do you think, a boom of local businesses to serve this new community of tech workers?
There are a certain number of jobs that are created through the Texas Stock Exchange. They've signed a lease preliminarily to locate what they're calling the "Texas Market Center" at the new Bank of America Parkside Tower in Uptown that's currently under construction. They'll have a ticker, and it's going to be very similar to what the NASDAQ has out there in Times Square in New York.
It's probably in the range of like 100 to 150 jobs that will likely be directly created through Texas Stock Exchange activities, but a number of jobs are also created when companies want to go public, or eventually will go public. As they continue to grow, they create jobs.
But really the biggest thing I think that comes out of the Texas Stock Exchange is more of what it represents symbolically. It represents the rise of Texas and particularly DFW as a financial hub, and all of that helps to attract other major firms.
Suarez: How unique is it around the country for somewhere outside of New York City to be opening up a stock exchange like this?
It's extremely rare. There's been a couple of other exchanges that are very specific and focused in terms of what they do. They're not trying to do what the Texas Stock Exchange is doing in terms of directly competing with the New York Stock Exchange and NASDAQ.
There is one that launched a few years ago that's very tech focused, but the Texas Stock Exchange is the first one in, as far as I know, decades to really launch as a regional exchange. This is very rare and uncommon, and it's been a big undertaking by the folks that are starting it up. They've been working on this publicly for two years. Really the work on that even began before they made their initial announcement. So, this has been a big undertaking and it remains to be seen how much traction they'll really gain.
Miranda Suarez and Ron Corning are the hosts of KERA's NTX Now. Got a tip? Email Miranda at msuarez@kera.org or Ron at rcorning@kera.org.
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