April 26 (Bloomberg) -- NYSE Euronext, owner of equity markets in the U.S. and Europe, intends to delay beyond June a performance-based pay plan for specialist firms that handle trading on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange.

``We'll push that out a month or two, but we're certainly going to endeavor to get there as soon as we can,'' NYSE Euronext President Duncan Niederauer, said today on a conference call. ``I can't ask the group to be tied to a performance-based system unless I'm comfortable that I've got the right performance-based system in place and they can actually perform.''

The delay, along with some regulatory changes, may give the Big Board's seven specialist firms more time to adapt to the so- called Hybrid Market, which lifted restrictions on electronic trading and automated many tasks done by floor brokers. The system has undermined trading opportunities for specialists, sparking a drop in transaction revenue and commissions for firms, including LaBranche & Co. and Van der Moolen Holding NV.

LaBranche, the largest of the seven specialists firms, said earlier this week it would have posted a loss for a fourth consecutive quarter if it didn't benefit from an investment in shares of NYSE Euronext. Amsterdam-based Van der Moolen forecast no improvement after U.S. revenue in the first quarter fell 56 percent from the prior quarter.

Incentive Payments

In December, the NYSE barred specialists from charging investors a fee for orders that couldn't get executed within 5 minutes. To compensate for the change, the NYSE agreed to pay specialists a total of $53 million during the six-month period ending in May for matching orders and facilitating trades. The payments were scheduled to move to a performance-based system in June, giving firms an incentive to provide investors better prices.

Delaying the plan could cost the exchange about $8.8 million a month. The NYSE also plans to make it easier for specialists to give customers better prices and trade for their own account, Niederauer told analysts today.

``This is about improving market quality and therefore increasing market share by doing so,'' said Niederauer, who was a managing director at Goldman Sachs Group Inc. before joining the NYSE two weeks ago.

LaBranche and Van der Moolen are the only publicly traded specialists firms. The remaining five are either privately held or units of investment banks.

Kellogg Specialist Group of New York and SIG Specialists Inc., a unit of Susquehanna International Group LLP in the Philadelphia suburb of Bala Cynwyd, Pennsylvania, are private companies.

Spear, Leeds & Kellogg, is owned by New York-based Goldman Sachs, while Banc of America Specialists, is a unit of Charlotte, North Carolina-based Bank of America Corp. Bear Wagner Specialists LLC is a unit owned in part by New York-based Bear Stearns Cos.

To contact the reporter on this story: Edgar Ortega in New York at ebarrales@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: April 26, 2007 17:18 EDT