Ever since the Chicago Mercantile Exchange’s (CME) initial public offering in 2002 —if not before — the writing was on the wall in terms of the direction of member-based financial exchanges.
Exchanges were looking to demutualize and access the capital markets by going public. And the Chicago Board Options Exchange (CBOE) being the preeminent U.S. based options exchange, with a hungry and innovative challenger in the International Securities Exchange (ISE) hot on its heels, was no different. However, CBOE had a legacy to overcome.
