Most Chicagoans remember the time when the city’s famed exchanges each day featured manic hordes of traders yelling and frantically signaling as futures contracts for commodities and financial instruments changed hands. Documentaries on life in Chicago until the dawn of this century invariably included video of the controlled mayhem in the pits.
But for the last 11 years, a bitter legal dispute has simmered in that famously colorful world. At the heart of the fight is the value of seats on the exchanges, which before electronic trading took hold more than two decades ago held substantial value and were bought, sold and leased to provide access to the trading floors.
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