CME Group, Inc. (“CME Group”), the world’s largest and most diverse derivatives marketplace, and PEAK6 Investments, L.P. (“PEAK6”) announced today that a lease has been finalized at the Chicago Board of Trade Building located at 141 W. Jackson Boulevard for PEAK6 to expand and extend its occupancy into the 7th and 8th floors previously occupied by Chicago Trading Company. Since 2004, PEAK6 has been a tenant at the Board of Trade Building for approximately 35,000 square feet on the 4th and 5th floors.
As part of this transaction, PEAK6 has also extended their lease, which now amounts to 80,000 square feet. In addition to helping to absorb its growing existing Board of Trade Building operations, PEAK6 will relocate its OptionsHouse subsidiary from 303 East Wacker Drive to the new floors. After the move, PEAK6 will house more than 350 people together on adjacent floors in the Board of Trade Building.
PEAK6’s original space on the 4th and 5th floors is a dramatic column-free open area of 35,000 square feet with a mezzanine around the perimeter, a 30 foot high ceiling, and expansive windows looking straight up LaSalle Street, a unique view from the historic Chicago Board of Trade Building. Matt Hulsizer, Co-Founder of PEAK6, said: “This transaction solidifies our presence at the Board of Trade Building for many years and provides us another unique and dramatic space to accommodate the growth in our businesses.
PEAK6’s new area on the 7th and 8th floors is another large column-free space with a mezzanine, a 20 foot high ceiling, and raised floor to accommodate extensive wiring to support electronic trading. “We chose to extend our commitment and expand our occupancy at the Chicago Board of Trade Building,” said Hulsizer, “due to many factors including the prominent LaSalle Street location, the Art Deco architecture in the landmark building, CME Group’s commitment to a major restoration completed in 2007, and the state of the art electrical and mechanical infrastructure that has been added and improved by the building’s management team. This is clearly the center of the trading community in Chicago.
The LaSalle and Jackson corridor continues to serve not only as Chicago's main financial district, anchored by the Chicago Board of Trade Building, but the area is home to many of the world's leading financial companies like PEAK6," said Kevin Lennon, Managing Director of Real Estate for CME Group. "As one of the city's most recognized locations and with our high occupancy rate, we continue to make improvements to the Chicago Board of Trade Building to support the demands of our customers on the trading floor and trading tenants."
The Chicago Board of Trade Building is a complex of three buildings consisting of the landmark North building, where PEAK6 is located; the South building addition opened in 1982; and the East building completed in 1997. The 4th floor trading floors in the South and East buildings house the CME Group open outcry trading floors for CME and CBOT products. The complex totals 1.5 million square feet and includes an outdoor plaza between Jackson and Van Buren, a 1-block section of LaSalle Street closed by the City of Chicago when the East building was constructed. Craig Braham and David Goldberg of Advocate Commercial Real Estate Advisors represented PEAK6. C-B-T Corporation, a wholly-owned subsidiary of CME Group, Inc. was represented in-house by Anthony Johnson and Robert Devine.
PEAK6 (www.peak6.com) is a financial services firm with businesses ranging from risk management, market making and asset management to retail brokerage and social networks. PEAK6 Capital Management LLC, an affiliated market making and proprietary trading firm, is a provider of risk management to the options market having traded hundreds of millions of options contracts since its founding in 1997. PEAK6 applied what it learned in its core trading markets, to create online businesses that expand the reach, relevance, and possibilities of the equity markets. OptionsHouse LLC is the only online brokerage with the technology, tools, and bloodline of PEAK6. ONN.tv is the premier source of options information, insights, and ideas on the web while WeSeed LLC is a social network that empowers and educates people who have never before engaged with the stock market. Regardless of business line, the success of PEAK6 is based on relentless innovation, flawless execution and, fierce entrepreneurialism.