Summit Notebook
Exclusive outtakes from industry leaders
Jon Stewart’s brother says mom ‘pretty happy with both’
A bit grayer and world wearier, maybe, but there’s no mistaking the family resemblance between NYSE Chief Operating Office Larry Leibowitz and his kid brother Jon Stewart. Unlike the Daily Show host, Leibowitz mostly keeps a low profile, although he did find himself in the spotlight even before his appearance at the Reuters Global Exchanges and Trading Summit on Monday. The Wall Street Journal interviewed him in a story about the NYSE’s effort to turn some high frequency traders — who have been chipping away at the exchange’s business — into exchange floor traders.
Leibowitz may be sick of the Jon Stewart questions, but when pesky Reuters editors and journalists inevitably raised them, he answered them with relatively good humor.
“I know my mother’s pretty happy with both,” the NYSE’s resident electronic trading expert said when asked whether it was tough living in the shadow of the celebrated news comedian. Leibowitz allowed that it was hard to imagine two brothers who had chosen more different careers. At this point, they even have different last names, after Leibowitz’s younger brother adopted a stage name.
While Stewart hasn’t shied away from financial themes, especially in his much-hyped verbal smackdown with Jim Cramer, Leibowitz said his kid brother hasn’t been running to him to ask for advice, even when his show has tackled topics like short selling and high frequency trading. But he admitted that being an older sibling, ”I give it to him anyway sometimes.”
How to gum up an exchange merger: salt water
It’s a puzzle M&A bankers and corporate executives have been trying to solve for years: how far from your home market can an acquisition take place and ultimately stumble over cultural differences? It’s a question that looms large as quintessentially Italian automaker Fiat prepares to swallow up Chrysler – inventor of the K-car and the minivan – and which reportedly haunts St Louis-based employees of Anheuser Busch in the aftermath of their company’s takeover by the penny pinching Belgians and Brazilians at InBev.
Gary Katz, CEO of Deutsche Boerse unit International Securities Exchange, insisted during his appearance at the Reuters Exchanges and Trading Summit that all has been sweetness and light since the Germans assumed control of the upstart American options exchange and that there has been “nearly zero turnover” since the takeover.
Nasdaq president to finance companies: come hither
A fertile planting ground for tech, biotech and even some energy offerings, Nasdaq OMX has historically struggled to lure listings in some other areas, notably financial services.
Now, that could be about to change, Nasdaq OMX President Magnus Bocker said at the Reuters Exchanges and Trading Summit. As Nasdaq looks for ways to attract new listings and end a virtual drought in IPOs, it sees financial services firms as one of the most promising areas.
Short sellers getting you down? Call an exchange exec
As if providing a trading platform, prestige and market data weren’t enough, stock exchanges are facing growing demands from the CEOs of their listed companies to help halt their stocks’ slide, BATS Trading CEO Joe Ratterman said at the Reuters Global Exchanges and Trading Summit on Monday.
Ratterman said he has been hearing of company bosses he calls “issuer-CEOs” giving the high-ups at rival exchanges, the New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq, an earful when the stocks of those companies come under attack from short sellers.
