Nasdaq, SharePost to form private-share exchange joint venture
07 Mar 2013
Nasdaq is planning to creating a market for trading shares of unlisted companies jointly with trading platform SharesPost, in a bid to tap into investor interest in private firms.
The venture, Nasdaq Private Market, might help its main exchange capture a greater share of listings from rival NYSE Euronext when companies went public, according to Josef Schuster, founder of Chicago-based financial services firm IPOX Schuster.
According to Schuster, NYSE was taking a lot of share away from the Nasdaq even in tech listings, so he thought it was kind of an opportunistic move.
SharesPost now lists over 200 private companies, including Twitter, led by Dick Costolo, as also Pinterest and Tumblr.
Nasdaq would own most of the new venture, which would be San Francisco-based and led by SharesPost founder Greg Brogger.
They hope the launch would happen later this year.
