The American Stock Exchange announced today that the rules for its new market structure have been published by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

Amex’s Auction and Electronic Market Integration (AEMI) platform is scheduled to launch in fourth quarter 2006, subject to SEC approval. The exchange says that its proposed market structure, “will offer market participants a greatly expanded range of automated transaction services across equities and exchange traded funds and will combine the dedicated liquidity provision of an auction market for times of order imbalances, complex trades, or when natural liquidity cannot be found”.

The exchange also says it believes that the fusion of automated execution and the auction market will meet the future needs of Amex customers, and will enhance the Amex’s competitiveness in a post-Reg NMS environment.

The AEMI trading platform has been in development since April 2004. The AMEX says that the system will be compliant with both the pre- and post-Regulation NMS regimes. This will allow the AEMI to be rolled out in the fourth quarter of this year, and then migrated to Reg NMS, which is expected to be implemented in February 2007.

“This is a milestone for the Amex and we appreciate the SEC’s feedback and hard work on our rules for AEMI,” said Neal Wolkoff, chairman and CEO. “We are pleased to work with the SEC towards the next stage of the process to obtain approval for our new hybrid market structure. The AEMI platform is state-of-the-art technology and will unite the best qualities of electronic and auction markets.”