12/13/06

CitiGroup Smith Barney

Press Releases: Citigroup to launch electronic trading network. January 18, 2006– Clearwater, FL –

Citigroup Inc. (NYSE:C - news), the largest U.S. bank, plans to launch its own electronic stock-trading network that could potentially divert trading volume away from the New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq Stock Market Inc., the Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday. Jim O'Donnell, head of U.S. equities at Citigroup, told the paper the bank seeks to create "flexibility" for itself, clients and other broker-dealers.Citigroup officials said the new electronic network will be run separately from its own trading business and will be accessible to other firms that want to buy or sell stocks.

Citi's venture, to be rolled out this spring, follows the bank's acquisition last week of OnTrade Inc., an electronic communications network that had been operated by closely held NexTrade Holdings Inc. of Clearwater, Florida. Big brokerage firms are trying to protect themselves in case stock exchanges, most of whom are converting from member-owned organizations into publicly traded, for-profit companies, try to raise the cost of trading, the paper reported.

The NYSE, which will soon go public after its merger with Archipelago (AMEX:AX - news), and electronic exchange Nasdaq (Nasdaq:NDAQ - news) recently announced fee increases. Last year Citigroup and other Wall Street firms purchase stakes in the Philadelphia Stock Exchange and an electronic venture run by the Boston Stock Exchange. These investments began after the NYSE and Nasdaq announced in April they were buying large electronic-trading venues that would give them a dominant share of the market. The new venture will help reduce Citigroup's transaction costs, a person familiar with the bank's strategy told the Journal. Citigroup's move also could provide it more revenue from distribution of market data.

From the NexTrade Investor Update, October 2001, Volume III, Issue 4

On Monday, October 8th, NexTrade represented more than 1.5% of the entire NASDAQ volume and we equaled nearly 20% of our largest competitor's volume.

Billable shares executed by NexTrade systems in the 3rd Quarter of 2001 equaled 310,388,881 versus 28,263,659 for Quarter 3, 2000, a 998% increase in volume.

Revenues for NexTrade Holdings, Inc. also expanded dramatically. Though the financials are un-audited and currently incomplete, we expect revenues in Quarter 3 to exceed $2.7 million, which would represent more than a 360% increase over the same period in 2000 when the revenues were $539,260.

Operationally, Q3 2001 was another quarter of multiple successes for NexTrade Holding, Inc. To begin with, the Information Technology (IT) department, which is the largest area of investment by NexTrade Holdings, Inc. delivered many upgrades and improvements to our technology infrastructure. In Q3, we completed the implementation of our new messaging architecture, "PUB/SUB" which gives us the capability to scale our hardware to much higher levels. This implementation was significant to NexTrade because it finalized our architecture conversion begun in late 1999.

This was also remarkable Quarter for the Quality Assurance team. The roll-out of the final version of "PUB/SUB" was flawless, a major accomplishment for any software development. Our continuing investment into our technologies has allowed us to build a system that is truly first-class, scalable, and reliable.

The second quarter of 2001 was absolutely exceptional. The management team at NexTrade Holdings, Inc. is ecstatic to report record volumes, record revenues, record collections, and record profitability for the company.

Billable shares executed by Nextrade systems in the 2nd Quarter of 2001 equaled 233,876,244 versus 36,414,002 for Quarter 2, 2000, a 542% increase in volume. Sequentially, the 2nd Quarter 2001 volume figure was 211% grater than the 1st Quarter 2001 volume figure of 74,997,490.

Click here for the full 2nd Quarter 2001 report.

From 1998 to 2000, NexTrade Holding, Inc. accelerated revenue more than 2800% and more then 230% year over year. Compared to 1999, 2000 trading activity across the NexTrade ECN increased more than 300%, a growth rate that outstripped the NASDAQ by nearly 500%. Looking forward, we believe that NexTrade will continue to increase its revenues and trading volumes faster than the market in general, to the direct benefit of our Company and our shareholders.

Near the end of 2000, we successfully implemented our new systems architecture. This technological overhaul, which actually commenced in September of 1999, was a complete redesign of the entirety of NexTrade's processing systems. This new design is truly scalable, wholly flexible, and constructed to allow NexTrade to move into new markets very quickly. Perhaps most importantly, this new architecture will allow NexTrade to substantially increase the volumes currently handled by the ECN.

This site was last updated 12/02/06