Stock exchange to be sold

Tuesday, June 3, 2003 | 9:41 a.m.

NEW YORK -- For the second time in four years, the American Stock Exchange is being sold, this time to a private equity firm that has agreed to invest $110 million in the exchange that was once known as the Curb Exchange because it operated out of doors.

The seller is NASD, the regulatory organization that bought the Amex in 1999. NASD will not keep any of the money being spent on the exchange by the private equity firm making the investment, GTCR Golder Rauner. Instead, all of that money is to be invested in the Amex.

What NASD will get is, in a word, out. It will be exempted from the remaining financial obligations that it undertook when it agreed to buy the Amex. It appears that the NASD lost money on its ownership of the Amex, although no one was willing on Monday to say just how much.

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