The Globe and Mail reports in its Wednesday edition that the TMX Group is expanding into the United States in a direct challenge to its much larger American rivals. The Globe's Jameson Berkow writes that TMX Group, which owns the Toronto Stock Exchange and TSX Venture Exchange, disclosed plans to take the fight head on to the likes of the New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq during a Tuesday conference call with analysts. "The quality of our offerings can compete with any of the North American players in their home market just the same way they compete in the Canadian market," said John McKenzie, the TMX chief executive officer. "We haven't had broad discussion in public yet, so I'm going to be a bit more limited in terms of what we share today," Mr. McKenzie said. "But it is definitely more than what I would call experimentation." Part of the southward expansion is already under way. In September, TMX hired Wall Street veteran Heidi Fischer as its first president of U.S. equity trading. Ms. Fischer has been tasked with building a team that will soon start to woo American institutional investors. Those investors will be pitched on the merits of the Alpha-X/Alpha-DRK platform, which TMX launched in Canada last week.