Effective July 1, 2009, and pending filing with the SEC, NYSE Arca options and NYSE Amex options will no longer charge a facilitation fee to firms who facilitate their customer order flow. The Firm Facilitation Fee applies to any transaction involving a firm's proprietary trading account, which has a customer of that same firm on the contra side of the transaction. Both exchanges will be lowering the Broker Dealer/Firm Manual Fee from $0.26 to $0.25. Additionally, the fee for electronic broker dealer/firm orders at NYSE Amex will be reduced from $0.50 to $0.15, representing a 70% fee reduction. The new $0.15 rate will make it substantially less expensive for firms and broker dealers to transact electronic business on NYSE Amex options. The new electronic broker dealer/firm rate on NYSE Amex is the lowest among all 7 options exchanges.

"We are proud to offer our customers one of the most competitively priced fee schedules in the industry," said Ed Boyle, Senior Vice President, U.S. Options, NYSE Euronext. "As a result of recent technology enhancements made to our trading infrastructure, our industry-leading speed and functionality are further strengthened by our commitment to providing exceptional market quality and some of the lowest transaction fees in the industry. We look forward to continuing to provide the functionality, transparency and cost efficiency that our customers expect."

Both NYSE Arca and NYSE Amex options operate hybrid systems that incorporate state-of-the-art open outcry trading facilities with an advanced electronic trading platform capable of processing 250,000 orders and 1,500,000 quotes per second with 2 millisecond acknowledgment (ACK ) times. All other transaction fees remain unchanged.[1] The anticipated incremental order flow to NYSE Arca options and NYSE Amex options is expected to offset this pricing reduction.

[1] Additionally, NYSE Arca options will remove the manual linkage rate and NYSE Amex options will re will reduce the linkage fee from $0.50 to $0.15.