The upstart Texas Stock Exchange is pulling in major names to help guide it including former Dallas Federal Reserve President Richard Fisher and former Texas Gov. Rick Perry.
Dubbed “Y’all Street” as the stock exchange looks to capitalize on Texas’ growing economic clout, CEO James Lee said the platform is looking to launch from Dallas in late 2025 with trades in early 2026, along with offering exchange-traded funds and “a range of data services.”
“To date, we’ve raised a little bit over $135 million, which makes us the most well-capitalized national securities exchange applicant to ever file a registration with the SEC,” said Lee during a press conference at the Texas Governor’s Mansion Monday.
Those backers include financial giants BlackRock and Citadel Securities, which are also joining as “observers.” Dallas-based financial investment firm Westwood Group and Fortress Investment are among the investors.
Lee, a former investment banker with Sunbelt Securities and E-Trade, will lead the stock exchange, and Cam Smith, former president of Quantlab Financial in Houston, will be the company’s global head of trading and co-president.
While thanking Texas Gov. Greg Abbott for backing the exchange, Lee shot down speculation that the securities platform is being built in Texas for political reasons. Executives such as Tesla and X CEO Elon Musk have cited liberal politics in states with Democratic leadership as reasons for relocating their companies to Texas.
“This is as apolitical an exchange as ever could be put together,” Lee said. “There are not plans for anything like that.”
Instead, he pointed to the large number of publicly traded companies headquartered in Texas, about 10% of the nation’s, and the size of the growing Texas economy, which could soon surpass France with its $2.6 trillion gross domestic product.
“We’ve engaged with dozens of public companies to more fully understand their needs,” Lee said. “Issuers are looking for deep, liquid markets and enhanced visibility around their names, but they also want a better public market experience through greater alignment and stability around listing standards and costs.
“Trading organizations, the largest liquidity providers, want more competition too, driven by innovative, low-latency technology and, of course, lower costs, especially for market data and how members connect to exchanges.”
TXSE will submit a registration to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission in the coming months, Lee said, as the company starts building the infrastructure in Dallas to power the platform.
“We now have more finance professionals in the state of Texas than there are in the state of New York,” Lee said. “And with 170 co-location and enterprise data centers in Dallas alone, we now have the infrastructure necessary to operate national exchanges right here in Texas.”
Former Nasdaq senior managing director of listings Nicole Chambers is joining the Texas Stock Exchange as the new global managing director of listings. Former New York Stock Exchange regional head of capital markets Marc Cunningham was hired as another global managing director.
Fisher, who headed the Dallas Federal Reserve for a decade, was tapped as a strategic advisor. Perry, also the former U.S. Secretary of Energy along with executives from BlackRock, Citadel and other companies, will sit on the TXSE board of directors.
