Goldman Sachs Group Inc will sell its rights to operate as a designated market maker in more than 600 New York Stock Exchange-listed stocks to Dutch high-speed trading firm IMC Financial Markets, IMC and NYSE said.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.IMC is one of the largest market-making firms in the world and operates on more than 100 exchanges around the globe. It provides liquidity to NYSE Arca, Nasdaq, BATS and CBOE among others.Financial terms of the transaction were not disclosed, though the Wall Street Journal, citing people familiar with the deal, reported that IMC paid under $30 million. IMC also plans to hire about 15 floor brokers from Goldman Sachs. link.reuters.com/xem59v
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, 3325860 shares of GS exchange hands on a given day and today's volume is recorded at 4226325.
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