It’s going to take more than this to blitz the Big Board.
Nine Wall Street powerhouses made a splashy announcement on Monday that they were forming a lower-cost rival to the New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq — but the start-up has no employees or office space, and has already struggled to lure top talent, sources told The Post.
The new venue, called Members Exchange or MEMX, is launching with backing from big outfits, including Morgan Stanley, Fidelity, Citadel Securities and Bank of America. MEMX will “offer a simple trading model with basic order types, the latest technology, and a simple, low-cost fee structure,” according to a statement from the group.
“This is the latest affirmation that the exchange business is rife with conflicts of interest, and market participants can no longer tolerate the abuses of power,” Brad Katsuyama, chief executive of exchange IEX, told The Post.
Nevertheless, sources said MEMX is still in the embryonic stage. While the for-profit company has incorporated and trademarked the name, it’s still recruiting workers and hasn’t even secured office space — though it plans to be based in New York, the people said.
Despite its high-profile backers, sources said MEMX also has hit some hiring snags. Late last year, MEMX was rumored to be in preliminary talks with industry executives one of which was said to be Ronan Ryan, the president of rival exchange IEX, a source familiar with the talks told The Post.
Nothing came from the Ryan discussion despite IEX’s relatively small market share of 2.6 percent, the source said.
“There were no discussions, there was no job offer,” said Gerald Lam, a spokesman for IEX.
However, MEMX spokespeople declined to comment.
NYSE is under fire after The Post exclusively reported last month that it had staged a hoax in late 2016, using its own regulatory team to fill up its empty trading floor while Snap executives toured the facility — ultimately luring them into bringing their initial public offering there.
Still, insiders say MEMX faces an uphill battle in distinguishing itself among the 13 stock exchanges that currently operate in the US.
MEMX said it plans to apply for regulatory approval “early” this year. One Wall Street watcher described that as an “aggressive” timeline for a company without employees.
Despite scant details in Monday’s press release, it was enough to send shares of Intercontinental Exchange, NYSE’s parent company, down 3 percent, to $73.38, following the announcement. Nasdaq fell 2.6 percent, to $79.81.
Wall Street has tried to launch its own exchanges before and failed.
Banks like Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs invested in BATS Global Markets and the Philadelphia Exchange — neither of which has come close to threatening NYSE, Nasdaq and CBOE, which together control more than 60 percent of stock-exchange trades. Knight Capital Group bought the predecessor company of Direct Edge in 2005. That exchange was later bought by BATS, which is now owned by CBOE.
“They tried this a decade ago,” one exchange official griped to The Post. “Instead of getting most of the money, they want it all.”