New York City Mayor Bloomberg To Receive 2008 CME Group Fred Arditti Innovation Award

The CME Group Center for Innovation (CFI) today announced that Michael Bloomberg, founder of Bloomberg LP and Mayor of the City of New York will be the 2008 recipient of the annual CME Group Fred Arditti Innovation Award. The award, the signature program of the CFI, will be presented to Bloomberg at a recognition dinner to be held on Wednesday, April 23, 2008, at the Peninsula Hotel in Chicago.

“Michael Bloomberg challenged Wall Street’s traditional approach to financial information, creating an innovative company that changed the speed, delivery and scope of data for investors around the world,” said CME Group Executive Chairman Terry Duffy. “His strategic use of technology increased the flow of critical information, adding transparency to financial markets around the world. He also had the foresight to understand the role of the news media in financial markets, moving his company beyond the platform into news services, print and broadcast. As a result of his innovation, when you think of financial information, whether it’s prices or news, you think of Bloomberg.”

“Mayor Bloomberg built his company on innovation and customer service,” said Craig Donohue, CME Group Chief Executive Officer. “He had the vision to see that the combination of market data, analytics and timely, insightful news could become a powerful tool for identifying investment and trading opportunities, creating greater growth and liquidity in existing markets and helping new ones to develop. He understood that innovation is an ongoing process as customer needs are ever-changing. His company has helped to shape today’s fast-paced and increasingly sophisticated global financial markets. Today he applies that same creativity and vision in his role as Mayor of New York City.”

“The CME Group Fred Arditti Innovation Award is our exchange’s version of the ’Nobel Prize’ to honor innovation in action taking into account not only the creativity of the innovation but the practical impact that it has on financial markets,” said CME Group Chairman Emeritus Leo Melamed, who is Vice Chairman of CFI’s Competitive Markets Advisory Council (CMAC). “There could be no better example of the attributes our award seeks to recognize than Michael Bloomberg. He had the courage and vision to contest traditional venues of financial data by providing market participants with analytical tools that allowed them to better understand and utilize the information received. Bloomberg is a true innovator who revolutionized and forever changed the nature and application of market information.”


“It’s an honor to accept the 2008 CME Group Fred Arditti Innovation Award,” said Bloomberg in accepting the award. “The impact of technology and product innovation on financial markets is beyond what anyone could have imagined when I founded Bloomberg LP. Using similar technologies and creative thinking, the City of New York has been able to make great strides in the way we manage government.”

Bloomberg attended Johns Hopkins University and graduated in 1964 with a Bachelor of Science degree in electrical engineering. Later he received his Master of Business Administration degree from Harvard Business School. After college, Bloomberg became a general partner at Salomon Brothers, where he headed equity trading, sales and systems development. Bloomberg began a small start-up company called Bloomberg LP, which he founded in 1981 to sell financial information terminals to Wall Street firms. Currently, Bloomberg is serving his second term as the Mayor of the City of New York.

Today, Bloomberg has become one of the largest sources for financial news. Bloomberg Professional® service is used by approximately 250,000 subscribers from the world's central banks, investment institutions, commercial banks, government offices and agencies, law firms, corporations and news organizations in over 150 countries. Bloomberg News encompasses television and radio programs in seven languages, financial book publishing, an award-winning magazine and print news carried by more than 400 publications in 70 countries.

The CME Group award is named after the exchange’s former Chief Economist Fred Arditti, who was instrumental in developing the International Monetary Market index upon which CME Group’s Eurodollar futures contract, the world’s most actively traded futures contract was founded The CME Group Fred Arditti Innovation Award honors an individual or group whose innovative ideas, products or services have created significant change to markets, commerce or trade. The award strives to celebrate innovation that through practical application has had a positive impact on the economic well-being of individuals, industry or a nation. Past recipients of the award are Economics Nobel Prize winner William F. Sharpe, Leo Melamed, CME Group Chairman Emeritus and Eugene Fama, distinguished Service Professor of Finance at the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business.

About the Center for Innovation
Under the direction of its Chairman Emeritus Leo Melamed, CME Group, the world’s leading and most diverse derivatives exchange, established the CME Group Center for Innovation in 2003, to identify, foster and showcase examples of significant innovation and creative thinking pertaining to markets, commerce and financial services in the public and private sectors. Each of CFI’s programs aims to explore and communicate the principals behind innovation and more importantly, showcase their application to a broad and diverse audience.

Oversight of CFI is provided by the CMAC, which includes: CMAC Chairman, John P. Gould; Steven G. Rothmeier, Distinguished Service Professor of Economics, University of Chicago Graduate School of Business; Gary S. Becker, Nobel Prize-Winning Economist, Professor of Economics and Sociology, University of Chicago; David D. Hale, International Economist and Founder, Hale Advisors, LLC; Robert C. Merton, Nobel Prize-Winning Economist, John and Natty


McArthur University Professor, Harvard Business School; Michael H. Moskow, Vice Chairman and Senior Fellow for the Global Economy and former President, Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, the Chicago Council on Global Affairs; Robert J. Shiller, Stanley B. Resor, Professor of Economics, Yale University Chief Economist, Macro Securities Research, LLC.

Additionally, the following CME Group senior officials serve as members of CMAC: Leo Melamed, CME Group Chairman Emeritus, CMAC Vice Chairman; Terry Duffy, CME Group Executive Chairman; Craig Donohue, CME Group CEO; Phupinder Gill, CME Group President; Charles Carey, CME Group Vice Chairman Jack Sandner, Retired Chairman.

For more information on the CME Group Center for Innovation, please go to http://www.cmegroup.com/cfi.