The International Securities Exchange, the US electronic options market, has launched an equities exchange, backed by seven Wall Street firms, to target volume on the New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq.

JP Morgan, Deutsche Bank, Bear Stearns, Citadel Derivatives Group, Interactive Brokers Group, Knight Capital Group and Sun Trading invested $32m (€26m) in setting up the ISE Stock Exchange, which is set to start operations later this year.