NYSE Group Inc. announced today that it has received approval from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to launch its next generation fixed-income trading platform, NYSE Bonds.

The newly-developed system utilizes NYSE Arca’s core matching technology to offer investors a transparent and highly efficient bond trading platform for all NYSE listed corporate debt securities. NYSE Bonds will begin rollout April 23.

Based on NYSE Arca’s open, accessible all-electronic design, this new system boasts increased efficiency and more transparent trading in corporate debt issues for NYSE members entering orders in bonds listed on the exchange. Primarily serving retail trading in corporate bonds, NYSE Bonds maintains and matches orders on a strict price and time priority basis and reports quotations and trade prices on an absolute real-time basis.

Based on SEC exemptive relief obtained in November 2006 that permits NYSE members and member organizations to trade certain unlisted debt securities on the Exchange, NYSE Bonds will be expanded to trade the unlisted corporate debt issues of all NYSE-listed equity issuers and their wholly-owned subsidiaries, allowing NYSE customers to access nearly 6,000 additional bonds compared to approximately 1,000 today.

“NYSE Group is very pleased to receive the SEC’s approval for our new bond trading platform, NYSE Bonds,” said vice president, Fixed Income, John Holman. “NYSE Bonds provides investors with very cost effective, real-time automatic order executions and adds significant transparency to the fixed income marketplace. We look forward to introducing this advanced system with a dramatically increased inventory of issues and industry leading functionality to better serve the bond trading community and their customers.”