"We are very pleased to have Brut participate in SuperMontage," said Dean Furbush, executive vice president of Nasdaq Transaction Services. "Nasdaq is confident that the market participants making the commitment to SuperMontage will benefit tremendously from participation as they serve investors from a central source of liquidity. We have had more than 75 Market Makers and ECNs participate in testing of our next-generation trading platform, and expect additional participants to join and test with us as we approach our July 29th roll-out date."
"Our approach has always been to provide our customers with quick, anonymous, cost effective execution, and access to liquidity wherever it resides," said Richard Schenkman, chief executive officer of Brut. "The added benefits of SuperMontage, coupled with our expanded product offering and innovative Sponsorship Program, provides our customers with the most flexibility and greatest opportunity for best-execution when trading."
Nasdaq's open and inclusive trading environment provides all market participants - regardless of business model - with the opportunity to compete voluntarily as they serve their customers. SuperMontage is an important step forward in the ongoing evolution of The Nasdaq Stock Market. The new trading system will provide traders and investors alike with more information and a more efficient means to act on that information.
SuperMontage was conceived to be the center of liquidity in Nasdaq-listed securities. It will offer the marketplace greater transparency, allowing participants to enter quotes and orders at several price levels; provide more choices in order display and execution; and provide a higher level of confidence for traders' best execution responsibilities. In the new SuperMontage platform, quotes and orders will go through a single-computer architecture, adding speed and efficiency to the market.
In 2001, Nasdaq completed the design, coding and programming of SuperMontage. Quality control and internal testing began in early 2002. External user testing began on April 20th, and will continue into July. The next scheduled user test is set for June 15th.
SuperMontage will be launched with a phased-in implementation beginning in July. This phased-in implementation will involve making a limited number of securities available for trading on the new platform on July 29th. Additional securities will be integrated into SuperMontage over subsequent weeks until all Nasdaq-listed securities are trading on the platform by September.
Nasdaq is the world's largest stock market. With more than 4,000 companies, Nasdaq lists more companies and trades more shares per day than any other U.S. market. Over the past five years, Nasdaq has outpaced all other U.S. markets in listing IPOs. It is also home to category defining companies that are leaders across all areas of business including technology, retail, communications, transportation, media and healthcare industries. With operations on three continents, Nasdaq is a key driver of global capital formation. For more information about Nasdaq, visit the Nasdaq Web site at www.nasdaq.com or the Nasdaq NewsroomSM at www.nasdaqnews.com.
