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SCOTT JAGOW: I’m sure you’ve seen what a trading floor looks like. Lots of people yelling and making hand gestures. Today, another signal the trading floor is on its way out. Members of the New York Board of Trade vote on a merger with an online commodity trading company. Alisa Roth reports.
ALISA ROTH: The New York Board of Trade is a futures market for commodities like coffee, sugar and cotton. Trades are made using an old-fashioned open outcry system.
The Intercontinental Exchange trades petroleum and other energy commodities electronically. It wants to buy the Board of Trade for a billion dollars.
Adam Sussman of the Tabb Group says this deal would offer the best of both worlds.
ADAM SUSSMAN: It offers product breadth in terms of the company being able to diversify its revenue and it also makes sense in terms of the synergies that they’ll be able to bring to the table.
Under the new deal, customers will have a choice of using the open outcry system or the new electronic one. But many say this is the beginning of the end for the old system.
Sussman says that’s okay.
SUSSMAN: Electronic trading is a more efficient way to invest and create capital.
Not everybody agrees. Some members of the Board of Trade filed a lawsuit late last week trying to block the merger.
I’m Alisa Roth for Marketplace.