A New York Stock Exchange seat holder has been arrested in connection with a death threat to a fellow member who criticised the NYSE's planned $3.5bn (€2.9bn) reverse takeover of Archipelago Holdings, the electronic exchange.

In July, NYSE seat holder William Higgins, a long-standing NYSE seat holder and chairman of the NYSE Equity Members Association which opposed the terms of the deal, received a death threat left on a voicemail according to his law firm Grant & Eisenhofer.