Chicago Board of Trade (CBoT) completed its first annual shareholder meeting as a publicly traded company on 2 May with top executives backing the continuation of pit trading even though the exchange has plans to launch side-by-side screen tradingthis year (see FO Week Vol 11 No 17).
While the exchange would continue to push its technology and distribution, Bernie Dan, CBoT president and CEO, told shareholders that he still supported keeping the trading floors open. One reason, he said, was that some trades remained best handled on the floor. He said that about 17% of the electronic volume on CBoT originates on the financial floor.
"We want to keep that arena open because some people don't like the isolation of an...