Last Thursday at the WF360 dinner, I had cocktails (and really good passed hors d'oeuvres) standing on the floor of the stock exchange. This was super cool, because they way they had it set up they just sort of trusted us not to spill wine on their keyboards. They don't even have cubes on the floor of the exchange - it's like the 5-around-a -pole group showers at camp, they just all stand in front of their desks (or in some cases sit on stools that are chained to their counters). We just saw everybody's name tags and note pads and, of course, passworded login screens on their monitors, right out there in the open.
It's OK because they don't have any privacy during the workday, either.
During the cocktails I had chit-chat with Tom Carroll and Jim Graham from RR Donnelley, a couple of clothing designers from the Spiegel catalog (Newport News to be exact), an executive from Avon, folks from communications and HR from DDB, and some staffers from Euronext. I spoke briefly with a top lawyer from the general counsel's office at Pfizer.
Then we were seated for dinner, and Catherine Kinney, COO of NYSE-Euronext, began to speak. She told us about the merger this year of Euronext, a major European exchange, and the New York Stock Exchange, which I hadn't managed to hear about although it happened last March and was announced almost a year earlier. The jist of her talk, which was thankfully completely geared so non-financial experts such as myself could understand every word, was that this merger marks the beginning of globalization of the exchanges of the world. They recently bought a small stake in an Indian stock exchange, and operate in both the Euro and the dollar.
To their clients who choose to go public on their exchange, they promise valuation, capital raise, and strength of brand -- pretty straightforward messaging. They're 2.5 times more liquid than other markets, particularly against NASDAQ. they aim to be the exchange for the quickly-growing tech companies (well, duh!) (she did not mention that Google chose to be listed on NASDAQ). And of course, Kinney got the crowd behind her by making a plea -- preaching the choir I must say -- for making some practical changes to Sarbanes-Oxley. Her other crowd-pleasing comment was, "we still have a lot of work to do on the litigation environment", and she quoted a friend who recently came to the US from London as saying, "I did 100 deals last year and had one problem; I did ten deals this year and had 100 problems!"
The filet mignon at dinner was really tasty, and I really enjoyed my dinner conversation about the impact of social media on children. The moms I was talking with worried that computers would lead to their kids "missing the human touch", and that passive interaction with overly imaginative sources would lead to the end of daydreaming and creativity. I must say that I'm not inclined to worry about either of those topics, but I was interested by their observations that their daughters, after a session playing with friends online, were unruly and disobedient. I have already noticed that our dog, now allowed outside by herself without a leash thanks to our new invisible fence, has begun to enjoy her new and glorious independence so much that she doesn't always obey me anymore. I've read similar testimonials from other invisible fence owners. So, perhaps lack of supervision, or more properly, independence, leads to less respect for parental constraints. Is that bad?
