GIX June 2023 Update

Hello there!

GIX is extremely grateful for the interest and support that you all have shown since our project was announced last September. We are working diligently to bring this important concept to life.

We have been busy the last nine months, and made important behind-the-scenes progress. We want to bring you up to speed on where we’ve been, where we’re going, and how we plan to get there.

Building the Team

A successful start-up is only as good as the team of people who come together to build it.

GIX is no different — soon after our public announcement we began building out the teams who would help us reach potential listing companies and trading firms.?We posted several positions to various job sites and were blown away with the quality and number of applicants. Thank you all!

We have since expanded to 13 people, including a sustainability evangelist, a head of listing sales, and two experienced connectors to Wall Street firms and large investment funds who would trade on the exchange. We also engaged a technology team and several former senior executives from Wall Street to help us execute our vision. We’ve been blessed to have these industry professionals join our team and their efforts have been nothing less than outstanding. But we’re not done yet — as we ramp up, we’ll be needing additional talent, so stay tuned.

Buy-Side, Sell-Side Outreach

A core component of our strategy to build a green future is to engage with Wall Street. Stock exchanges have historically been engines of growth, whether it was the industrial boom of the 1950s and 60s or the tech boom of the 90s or the always-on-always connected internet boom of the past 20 years. In each case, stock exchanges have created deep and liquid markets where investors can trade quickly, efficiently, and with confidence.

GIX is continuing this tradition by building a coalition of market makers, institutional investors, large banks and broker-dealers who will trade on the first dedicated Green exchange in the US. This has involved reaching out to dozens, even hundreds of firms to share our story, and getting early commitments by firms to trade on GIX when it goes live. We look forward to some exciting announcements as we get closer to the launch date.

Building the Exchange

GIX grew out of our fundamental belief that if we are going to build a greener future, large corporations will be at the core of any solution that works. But we also recognized that public companies aren’t charities, they’re profit-making enterprises that respond to market incentives.

And there are powerful incentives: according to reliable estimates, there will be $50 trillion in investments over the next ten years looking for sustainable investment opportunities. From the early stages of its conception, GIX was meant to serve as a listing venue for companies who are actually doing the hard work to highlight their efforts relating to sustainability so investors can know who’s really walking the talk.?We call this promise backed by real accountability a “credible commitment”. Once upon a time, the role of listing exchanges was to ensure that listed companies were credible — that they were committed to providing accurate and robust information to investors on a regular basis. Back then, the need was for standardized financial accounting and reporting, and today the need is for better environmental accounting and reporting. But while there have been significant developments at exchanges involving the mechanisms of trading and its fees over the past 30 years, we haven’t seen the same degree of innovation when it comes to listing standards.?GIX seeks to provide that innovation.

To that end, our listing team has done an amazing job over the past 6 months.?They have made contact with over 250 companies across a wide spectrum of industries and market capitalization, and they continue to build a pipeline of new companies with which to speak.?The overall response from companies has been nothing less than remarkable.?While it’s still early in our discussions, there seems to be a common thread of frustration in getting the “sustainability story” to the public. Companies are beginning to recognize that GIX will serve to be part of that solution.

Public Benefit

And finally, speaking of “walking the talk”, we at GIX will be holding ourselves to the same standard. Among other things, we are organized as a Delaware public benefit corporation, which means we pay attention to a triple bottom line — people, planet, and profit. We’re working with several large NGOs (non-governmental organizations) to develop a realistic carbon offset plan (with additionality) so that our trading is carbon-neutral — a first for Wall Street. And on Earth Day we announced our “Return to Green” program, where we will commit a portion of our trading revenue on every trade to the NGOs who are doing the hard work on the ground to build a greener future. Look for more announcements and details soon.

Thanks for your support

The GIX team has accomplished a great deal over the past year and we have been humbled by the support and interest from the financial industry and public. We look forward to sharing additional news and updates in the near future so stay tuned.?In the meantime, feel free to reach out with thoughts or questions.

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Tomorrow’s Blue Chips Will Be Green!

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