New Zealand Exchange Ltd

NZX established itself as a number of regional stock exchanges during the gold rush of the 1860s. The first brokers' association was started in Dunedin in 1867, then in Otago in 1868, Auckland in 1872, Wellington in 1882. The Dunedin Brokers' Association became a stock exchange in 1893, then Christchurch gained an exchange in 1900. Auckland, Christchurch, Dunedin, Thames and Wellington formed the Stock Association of New Zealand in 1915, joined by Taranaki in 1916, Invercargill in 1920 and Gisborne in 1922. The Stock Association of New Zealand set up a sub-committee to investigate setting up a national stock exchange. In 1983 the regional exchanges were amalgamated to form a national stock exchange, the New Zealand Stock Exchange (NZSE).

On 24 June 1991, NZSE implemented a computerised trading system, replacing the open outcry trading floors. This computerised system was replaced with the FASTER trading and settlement system in the late 1990s. NZX Clearing was launched in 2010 to take over clearing and settlement operations.

On 16 October 2002 the member firms of the New Zealand Stock Exchange voted in favour of demutualisation, and on 31 December 2002, NZSE became a limited liability company. On 30 May 2003, the New Zealand Stock Exchange Limited formally changed its name to the New Zealand Exchange Limited, trading as NZX, and on 3 June 2003 listed its own securities on its main equity market.

Mark Weldon was chief executive officer from 2002 to May 2012. Tim Bennett was CEO from May 2012 to 31 December 2016. NZX's Head of Markets, Mark Peterson, became interim CEO in January 2017, and permanent CEO from April 2017.

The NZX Centre building was originally constructed in 1907 for the C&A Odlin Timber Company, and is one of few surviving Edwardian industrial buildings in Wellington.

The New Zealand Exchange was subject to online distributed denial-of-service attacks that disrupted trading for five days commencing on 25 August 2020. A group of "DDOS extortionists" demanded an unspecified ransom be paid in Bitcoin or they would continue the attacks. The New Zealand Exchange ruled out paying the ransom and sought assistance from internet service provider Spark New Zealand and the country's signals intelligence agency Government Communications Security Bureau.