NYMEX Appoints Two Public Directors

The New York Mercantile Exchange recently appointed Harley Lippman, founder and chief executive officer of Genesis 10, an information technology company, and Robert Steele, a former public director of the Exchange and vice chairman of John Ryan Company, an international bank marketing firm, to two-year terms as public directors on the board of directors. Mr. Lippman was also the founder and owner of Triad Data, Inc., an $80 million information technology consulting company, sold to Renaissance Worldwide in April 1998. Triad was included in the Inc. 500 list of the fastest growing privately owned businesses in America in 1997, and Mr. Lippman was a finalist in the Ernst and Young Entrepeneur Award of the Year in 1998. He currently serves on the advisory board of the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University where he established the Todd Zipnick fellowship, in memory of his childhood friend. Mr. Lippman also serves on the board of the Middle East Forum, a think tank that publishes an intellectual quarterly about the Middle East. He is a foreign policy advisor to the Democratic Party and an active fundraiser. He is on the regional board of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) in New York, serves on the national commission of the ADL, and is vice chairman of the ADL in Europe. In addition to being vice chairman of John Ryan Company, Mr. Steele is also director of the Merlin Retail Banking Center in Stamford, Connecticut. A former banker and bank consultant, Mr. Steele has directed bank of the future projects in both the United States and Europe, as an innovator in bank marketing, product development, and branch design. The Merlin Center is a research, development, and concept center established by John Ryan Company in 1995 to help senior bank executives focus on the future of retail banking. Mr. Steele currently serves on six corporate boards and is chairman of the board of directors of Moore Medical Corporation. He served as a U.S. Congressman from the second district in Connecticut from 1970-1974, and was a public director of the Exchange from 1989 to 1995. Exchange Chairman Daniel Rappaport said, "In selecting our public directors, our board was particularly interested in candidates who had a thorough understanding of how technology is changing the business environment. We were delighted to find two individuals who not only are heavily involved in this arena, but also have a wealth of business and public experience that will serve the Exchange in good stead as we embark on the 21st century."