New NYSE CEO Hints About Changes

Last month, Thain said he sees a need for specialists on the floor but doesn't think they need to handle the volume of trades they currently do. Specialists should spend more time dealing with difficult trades, he suggested.

Peake said the fact that NYSE seat prices have remained stable recently suggests that real reform is unlikely.

"You'd have thought that given the lawsuit by Calpers against specialists and the NYSE, that the seat prices would have come down," he said. "The fact they didn't tells me that ... maybe it will be business at usual."

A regular seat on the NYSE sold for $1.5 million Thursday, which is unchanged from a month ago. Before the Grasso scandal erupted, the price stood at $2 million.

New York state Comptroller Alan Hevesi on Thursday urged Thain to consider reforms proposed by the National Coalition for Corporate Reform that were not adopted in the Reed plan. "In particular, we still believe that the NYSE main board should have public investor representation and that regulation should be meaningfully strengthened by being separated from operations," he said.

Many critics say interim Chairman John Reed's plan to fix corporate governance problems at the NYSE doesn't go far enough. Reed unveiled a plan last month to reduce the board of directors to eight and named former corporate executives and Wall Street insiders to fill it, a response to criticism over the previous board's approval of Richard Grasso's $139.5 million pay package, when he was chairman.

At that time, Hevesi said he favored at least two boards: one to oversee the NYSE's regulatory division, and another to decide compensation issues and market-related matters. On Wednesday, The NYSE decided to separate the chairman and chief executive posts. The SEC approved that decision and endorsed Reed's plan to create a smaller board.