Anna Ewing Innovates Trading at Nasdaq

Web-based portal market for qualified institutional buyers launched, Equities platform leveraged to grade both equities and options, Handling volumes and latency demands for customers continues to drive initiatives

The Nasdaq Stock Market

Anna Ewing

EVP of Operations and Technology, and CIO

PREVIOUS POSITIONS:
SVP in charge of application services, Nasdaq; managing director and head of e-commerce, CIBC World Markets; VP, Merrill Lynch, as well as various positions in the corporate and institutional client group technology division, including head of financial futures and options and prime brokerage technology, and regional head of Merrill Lynch Canada.

EDUCATION:
M.B.A, Schulich Business School at York University in Toronto.

The Nasdaq Stock Market
One Liberty Plaza 165 Broadway
New York, NY 10006

SIZE OF FIRM:
Approximately $2.1 billion in average daily volume.

WHAT WORK EXPERIENCE HAD THE MOST LASTING IMPRESSION ON YOUR CAREER?
My tenure here at Nasdaq has been very exciting and challenging. I joined in late 2000 when Nasdaq was going through a change from a regulatory to a profit-driven enterprise. Implementing our latest state-of-the-art trading platform has been a great challenge.

LAST GOOD BOOK READ:
"Next," by Michael Crichton.

What's Next?

The trend in the exchange industry is globalization and consolidation. That is the next big trend that has significant technology issues. How do you integrate the market models, the global distribution networks, manage the different regulatory climates, etc., and really change the business model of what an exchange does?

VITALS

IT Budget:

N/A

Key Technology Management:

N/A

Size of Technology Team:

N/A

Percent of IT Projects Outsourced:

Very minimal.

Key Technology Partners:

N/A

Success Metrics:

Our metrics are pretty basic and very measurable. We look at the availability and reliability of our platforms. We are also big proponents of customer feedback. We have proactive communications out to our customer base. They count the most. For delivery projects, we look at budgets and time to market and satisfaction within our lines of business. Our projects have to be cost-efficient and timely.

2008 INITIATIVES

Boosting Speed and Volume

We have seen explosive growth in black-box and algorithmic trading. Handling the volumes and latency demands for our customers will continue to drive all of our initiatives. We process more than 430 billion transactions per day, hitting peaks of 125,000 transactions per second. We are more prepared today to deal with a truly stressed marketplace. Our capacity and throughput has increased more than 100 percent. We have been able to manage that growth very successfully.

Coping With Globalization

Last May Nasdaq and Swedish stock exchange OMX announced plans to combine as the Nasdaq OMX Group. We expect the deal to close in late 2007.

TOP 3 CURRENT PROJECTS

Launch of Nasdaq Options Market

We will leverage our equities platform to trade both equities and options. Our platform provides a level playing field for all participants. We are targeting the fourth quarter for launch.

Launch of Web-Based Portal Market

The portal will give qualified institutional buyers (QIBs) cost-effective access to U.S. capital markets secondary to trading of 144A securities. These securities are not subject to the same regulations as our 1934 Exchange Act registered securities, so they are not under [Sarbanes-Oxley]. We believe this will transform the way capital is raised for both U.S. and non-U.S. companies. We are targeting the third quarter for launch.

Developing New Market Data Products

We have been very proactive in developing new market data products. We have won some awards there. We are leveraging our market data distribution network to meet the demands of what is now an increasingly successful investor base. Our flagship product is Total View. This gives the most complete view of Nasdaq data. We also have Nasdaq Market Velocity, which alerts traders to events before they occur.