Almost five years ago, when Tokyo Stock Exchange officials first decided to turn the privately held TSE into a stock company, they probably never thought it would be this hard to take their own market public.

But the TSE and the Financial Services Agency are clashing over the plan to make the bourse a publicly traded company in fiscal 2005.

The financial watchdog has claimed that the TSE -- which rose to stock company status in 2001 from a nonprofit membership organization of securities firms -- cannot be a listed company unless the bourse spins off its regulatory operations.