Sept. 9 (Bloomberg) -- NYSE Euronext plans to sell stakes in the options business it purchased last year with the American Stock Exchange to brokerages as it seeks to revive the division, according to a person familiar with the matter. Once the nation’s second-largest options exchange, NYSE Amex lost market share for eight straight years, to 5.8 percent in 2008 from 28.6 percent in 2000, according to data compiled by Options Clearing Corp. The proportion has climbed to 5.9 percent in 2009. NYSE spent $260 million to buy Amex in 2008. U.S. derivatives trading is growing faster than the market for equities, where NYSE Euronext’s 217-year-old New York Stock Exchange has the largest share of business. The number of options changing hands doubled between 2005 and 2008. The New York-based company also owns NYSE Arca, which has handled 11 percent of U.S. equity derivatives trading in 2009. Richard Adamonis, a spokesman for NYSE Euronext, declined to comment. The Wall Street Journal reported the news earlier. Bank of America Corp., Barclays Plc, Citigroup Inc., Citadel Investment Group LLC, Goldman Sachs Group Inc., TD Ameritrade Holding Corp. and UBS AG will purchase stakes possibly totaling more than 50 percent in NYSE Amex, the Journal reported. Calls and e-mails placed outside normal business hours weren’t immediately returned by Bob Stickler, a spokesman at Bank of America, Barclays’s Peter Truell, Citigroup’s Michael Hanretta, Citadel’s Bryan Locke, Goldman Sachs’s Ed Canaday, TD Ameritrade’s Kim Hillyer and UBS’s Sabine Jaenecke.

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