GM's Move to Nasdaq Is About Index Buyers and Tech Image

After more than a century listed in New York, automaker GM is moving to Nasdaq later this month.

Jim Kane, GM's director of financial communications, says "the quality of execution on both the New York Stock Exchange and the NASDAQ is very similar and very high quality."

Kane says the appeal is a chance to expand its ownership base by becoming eligible for the Nasdaq 100, one of the most followed indexes in the world.

The Nasdaq 100 is a basket of 100 of the largest nonfinancial companies listed on Nasdaq. Index funds that copy that basket would buy GM, creating new demand from investors who follow the index.

The move is also a branding exercise. Nasdaq lists many large technology firms, so joining it lets GM talk more about software than sheet metal.

Kane says much of building cars today is building technology, pointing to GM's investments in AI for vehicles, electrification, and autonomous driving. Hilton made a similar pitch about AI-powered trip planning when it moved to Nasdaq, and Walmart did the same last year when it said both companies had redefined their industries through innovation.

James Angel, a finance professor at Georgetown University who has advised Nasdaq, says companies are sometimes "trying to rebrand and emphasize that they are a different company than they used to be."

Moves go the other way, too. Angel says some companies prefer New York because of its prestige, and sometimes the reason is as simple as a new finance chief who likes one exchange better.

That shopping around is unusual. Jay Ritter, who leads IPO research at the University of Florida, says most countries have one main market for big companies, plus a smaller junior market that successful companies graduate from. In the United States, the two big exchanges compete head to head, so where a company lists can reflect the story it wants to tell.