Amended Order Directing the Exchanges and the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, Inc., To File a National Market System Plan Regarding Consolidated Equity Market Data

As previously announced by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) (EventID 22867), the Commission has now published in the Federal Register (FR) its order to direct authorized exchanges and FINRA to create a new national market system plan (NMS plan) in accordance with the order to replace three existing plans governing the dissemination of real-time consolidated equity market data. This move follows concerns about the previous order, particularly about conflicts of interest between the exchanges‘ regulatory roles and their interests in proprietary data products, raised by various Self-Regulatory Organizations (SROs) associated with Nasdaq, the NYSE, and Cboe and subsequently petitioned in court for a review. The D.C. Circuit Court granted some of the petitions regarding non-SRO voting members, but denied other aspects, leading to the vacating of the previous order and subsequent delivered NMS plan. The SEC now instructs SROs to submit a Revised New Consolidated Data Plan in accordance with the provisions outlined in the „amendment order.“ The Commission expects SROs to submit this revised plan no later than October 23, 2023.