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Defendants are option exchanges that provide a forum on which their members trade options.
An equity option is one in which the underlying interest is an equity security. Since the early 1990s, exchanges have been permitted to list options on any equity security that meets certain listing criteria. The Complaint alleges that, beginning in the early 1990s, an agreement arose among the defendants to limit competition among themselves by not listing equity options that were already listed on another exchange. Specifically, the proposed Final Judgment prevents the defendants from allocating equity options between or among exchanges or from agreeing that an equity option will be traded exclusively on any one exchange. The proposed Final Judgment also prohibits an exchange from maintaining any rule, policy, practice or interpretation that directly prohibits, or that has the purpose and an effect of indirectly prohibiting, the multiple listing of equity options.