IMC Financial Markets has agreed to acquire Goldman Sachs Group Inc 's rights to operate as a designated market maker in more than 600 NYSE-listed stocks, the Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday. The Dutch high-speed trading firm paid under $30 million, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing people familiar with the deal. IMC also plans to hire about 15 floor brokers from Goldman Sachs.Designated market-makers, formerly known as "specialists", operate both manually and electronically to facilitate price discovery during market openings, closings and during periods of substantial trading imbalances or instability for thousands of NYSE-listed stocks.Goldman acquired the designated market-maker unit as part of its $6.5 billion purchase in 2000 of Spear, Leeds & Kellogg.Goldman Sachs plans to remain a broker on the New York Stock Exchange's trading floor executing trades on behalf of clients, the paper said.
The Goldman Sachs Group, Inc. (Goldman Sachs), is a global investment banking, securities and investment management firm that provides a range of financial services to a substantial and diversified client base that includes corporations, financial institutions, governments and high-net-worth individuals. Shares of GS traded higher by 1.92% or $3.0/share to $159.35. In the past year, the shares have traded as low as $148.71 and as high as $181.13. On average, 3299100 shares of GS exchange hands on a given day and today's volume is recorded at 4226325.
Source
