(Reuters) – Nasdaq Inc and the New York Stock Exchange have sued the Securities and Exchange Commission, seeking to block a regulator’s plan to review public data feeds that transmit share prices to investors, court documents show.
According to the SEC plan, approved in December, share offer and demand data would be added to public feeds, expanding access to the information that exchanges currently sell to professional premium traders.
“Nasdaq believes that the SEC has exceeded its authority by adopting a thoughtless overhaul of the market structure,” said a Nasdaq spokeswoman in an e-mailed statement. The plan “would make stock markets excessively complex and increase hidden costs for investors,” the statement said.
The requests were made in the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.
The Wall Street Journal reported that Cboe Global Markets, which operates the Chicago Board Options Exchange, was also suing the SEC over the issue. Cboe did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Reuters.
The suit is the most recent legal action taken by the exchanges against the SEC in recent years, which includes a successful challenge to an experiment proposed by the SEC to limit the trading fees of 1,400 different shares.
The SEC is also dealing with other lawsuits. In October, Citadel Securities sued the commission for its decision to approve a new share trading mechanism at the exchange operator IEX Group Inc.
Kanishka Singh reporting in Bengaluru; Editing by Edwina Gibbs