“This acquisition gives NYSE Group and its clients a strong platform for technological growth in benchmark trading,” said Mike Cormack, NYSE Group Executive Vice President. “This is a significant step toward our goal of offering customers the most comprehensive and all-encompassing set of trading technology solutions that meet their needs and exceed their expectations.”

Specifically, MatchPoint’s portfolio-crossing technology will expand the ability of NYSE Group to match baskets of stocks at pre-determined points in time in the after-hours market and eventually at any point during the day. Prior to acquiring MatchPoint Trading, NYSE Group had limited ability to match multiple stocks and focused primarily on crosses for single stocks only. NYSE Group expects to deploy the new technology in the first quarter of 2007.

“MatchPoint was created to champion next-generation crossing opportunities for today’s evolving marketplace,” said Jim Ross, founder and CEO of MatchPoint Trading, who will join NYSE Group as vice president of NYSE Crossing. “By bringing our innovative, point-in-time benchmark crossing services to NYSE Group, we can now offer the advantages of the MatchPoint engine to investors, issuers and market professionals around the world.”

In addition to operating multiple matches — a must for today’s portfolio traders — MatchPoint also processes internal crosses for single participants. This enables crossing participants to leverage their internal liquidity and to match against other crossing participants’ liquidity all in the same cross. The technology matches aggregated orders at pre-determined times at prices that are derived from the NYSE, the American Stock Exchange and Nasdaq.

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