Cboe confirms HQ move to Old Post Office

Cboe Global Markets, the biggest U.S. options exchange, announced today it will move its South Loop headquarters west to the Old Post Office and shift its trading floor to the Chicago Board of Trade Building.

The company said it signed a 15-year lease for about 185,000 square feet in the Old Post Office building at 433 W. Van Buren St. Crain’s had previously reported Cboe was close to finalizing a deal to move the HQ to the Old Post Office.

“After a rigorous evaluation process, the Old Post Office was determined to be the ideal fit as its renovation is transforming this landmark building into a showcase property with world-class features and amenities,” Cboe CEO Ed Tilly said in a statement.

Cboe, which currently has both its headquarters and trading floor at 400 S. LaSalle St., plans to move the trading floor just across the street from its current location to the CBOT Building at 141 W. Jackson Blvd. and will have a 12-year lease there.

Cboe plans to move its Chicago staff, which makes up about half of its headcount, to the new HQ by the second half of 2020. Cboe will occupy about 185,000 of 2.3 million rentable square feet at the Old Post Office. The company announced its plans to Cboe employees at a global town hall meeting earlier today, according to the statement. It currently has about 430 employees in Chicago, said a spokeswoman for the company.

It’s not small development for traders that the trading floor will be moving. Each trader occupies a very specific place on the trading floor, and the negotiations on moving even a single trader can be extensive. Moving the entire floor will prompt a lot of questions about how traders will be positioned in the new location.

The company’s current trading pits have shrunk in recent years as trading activity shifted from the trading floor to electronic systems, but two key pits remain at the current location, including the S&P 500 Index, or SPX, options pit and Cboe Volatility Index, or VIX, options pit. They will occupy about 40,000 square feet at the new location, down from 44,000 square feet at the current location in 2016.

The options exchange operator will represent one of the largest leases yet at the long-vacant 2.5 million-square-foot Old Post Office, which New York developer 601W is reintroducing to the market after an estimated $900 million renovation.

The new venue won’t be unfamiliar territory because Cboe’s first trading floor was located at the CBOT when it was founded in 1973. The new Cboe trading floor buildout will occupy the same area that housed Cboe trading pits in the late ’70s and early ’80s, until Cboe moved to 400 S. LaSalle in 1984, the company said.

The company plans to sell its current building at 400 S. LaSalle. Holly Duran Real Estate Partners was Cboe’s broker on the leases and is representing Cboe in the sale of its current HQ.

Bringing the Cboe trading floor back to the CBOT building is a win for the tower’s owners, which recently put the 44-story landmark up for sale. A joint venture of Chicago-based developer GlenStar Properties and Los Angeles-based private-equity firm Oaktree Capital Management hired a broker to market the 1.4 million-square-foot property seeking more than $330 million, according to sources familiar with the offering.

GlenStar and USAA Real Estate paid about $152 million for the property in 2012 and subsequently put $35 million into building upgrades, GlenStar executives said last year.

The building was 77 percent leased as of April, below the 87 percent average for downtown office buildings, according to data from brokerage CBRE. CME Group, which signed a 15-year lease in the building for about 148,000 square feet in 2012 when it sold it to GlenStar and USAA, remains the largest tenant.

Danny Ecker contributed.