John At The Center

In the late 18th century there was a buttonwood tree in lower Manhattan where brokers gathered to trade stocks. But by 1817, the tree had become obsolete as a trading hub. The traders migrated indoors and changed the name of their group to the New York Stock and Exchange Board. The exchange moved a couple of more times after that, and in 1903 the NYSE opened for business in the neoclassical masterpiece that still stands at the corner of Wall and Broad Streets.

via The Weekend Interview with Duncan Niederauer: Is the Stock Exchange Obsolete? – WSJ.com.

First, the good news: There are nearly 70 Chinese companies now listed on the NYSE. “Those have all come in the last few years” and “for the same reasons that the Allianzes of the world came here 20 or 30 years ago.” So far, the Chinese domestic market “is not developed, liquid or deep enough,” which draws companies to the U.S.

The bad news, according to Mr. Niederauer, is that while Allianz had some legitimate reasons to delist, the 2002 Sarbanes-Oxley law may very well have been the nail in the coffin. The act—which increased the reporting burden on companies—is “one of the things that has made us less competitive,” and “hurt the U.S. capital markets competitiveness.”