Gold Sponsor representative Chris Church of BT Financial Services presents the Market Data Lifetime Achievement Award to Leo McBlain

Market Data Lifetime Achievement Award Winner Leo McBlain (center) with (L to R) Tom Davin - FISD, Bernie Weinstein - 2005 Lifetime Achievement Award Winner, and Gold Sponsors Chris Church - BT Financial Services and Ottavio Gisler - EXFEED

About the Award
FISD has established a Lifetime Achievement Award in order to recognize the people who have contributed to the major developments and accomplishments of the financial information industry over the past 20 years. The FISD Market Data Lifetime Achievement Award is presented biennially at the World Financial Information Conference (WFIC). Candidates must have been in the industry for more than 15 years and have provided a notable contribution to the market data industry. The first award was presented at the WFIC 2005 Awards Banquet in Rome, Italy. The 2007 winner will be announced September 24 at WFIC 2007 in Newport, Rhode Island.

2007 Nominees:

• Joseph Kasputys, Global Insight
• Leo McBlain, Financial Information Forum
• Jean Claude, Marchand, Infotec
• Seth Merrin, Liquidnet

Joseph Kasputys

Dr. Kasputys formed Global Insight, Inc. in March 2001 to join together the world's premier economic and financial analysis and forecasting firms:  Data Resources DRI and WEFA (formerly Wharton Economic Forecasting Associates), along with Global InTech, a software company specializing in time-series data management and interests in Decision Economics, headed by noted economist Dr. Allen Sinai.

Dr. Kasputys was with Primark Corporation from 1987 to 2000, where he served as chairman, president, and CEO while successfully transforming Primark from a major utility holding company into a leading financial information and information technology firm.  While at Primark, he acquired EFA, co-founded Primark Decision Economics and founded Global InTech.  He sold Primark to Thomson in September 2000, and briefly served as chairman of Thomson Financial during an integration period.

Coinciding with his role as CEO of Primark, Dr. Kasputys served as president and CEO of TASC (The Analytic Sciences Corporation), an information technology firm and a subsidiary of Primark. He also served as managing director of Datastream, an international financial information company with headquarters in London, also a subsidiary of Primark.

Prior, Dr. Kasputys served as EVP of McGraw-Hill responsible for business development and as Chief Economist responsible for coordinating the economic work of all of its businesses. Dr. Kasputys joined DRI in 1977 and became its COO.  DRI pioneered in developing large econometric models and forecasts for many countries and industries.  After the sale of DRI to McGraw-Hill, Dr. Kasputys became DRI's president and CEO. From 1972 to 1977, Dr. Kasputys was with the U.S. Department of Commerce, first as Assistant Administrator of the U.S. Maritime Administration and then received a presidential appointment as Assistant Secretary of Commerce.  During this period, he helped to found the U.S. Department of Energy.

Jean-Claude Marchand

Jean-Claude Marchand has worked throughout his career to spread market data so that financial markets could become more transparent and grow rapidly. As a senior executive, he helped build up Reuters as a world-leading vendor of market data and financial information. In recent years, he also pioneered Internet-based systems that lower the cost of data. He is currently Chairman of Infotec, a Swiss-based market data company.

In his early career with Reuters, he helped the development of financial markets in Asia and Central & Eastern Europe by opening up their access to market data for the first time.

In the 1970s, markets in Asia had only limited contact with the rest of the financial world. As Reuters Sales & Marketing Manager, Mr Marchand worked with local market participants to establish telecommunications links and access data from around the world through Reuters systems. This enhanced market transparency, and in turn opened the way for these countries to become major players in the global economy.

In the 1980s, he played a similar path-finding role in Central & Eastern Europe, enabling state-owned banks to obtain the real-time information they needed to participate in international markets. In the post-Communist 1990s, he led Reuters rapid expansion in these countries. Access to market data furthered the development of free financial markets and fuelled dynamic economic growth.

Mr Marchand joined Reuters in 1971 when it was pioneering financial market information systems that innovatively linked content with computer technology and telecommunications. He was appointed to the Executive Committee in 1992 and the Board in 1996. Latterly, he was Chief Executive of Reuters Global Sales & Operations. His team at the Geneva European headquarters developed the company’s biggest revenue-earning product, Reuters 3000 Xtra.

After leaving Reuters in 2001, Mr Marchand moved as COO to Edipresse, a major Swiss newspaper and magazine publisher with properties also in Asia, Eastern Europe and Iberia. On his initiative, Edipresse moved into electronic financial data by acquiring Infotec. Under Marchand’s leadership, this fast-growing company has moved further in developing low-cost models for high-quality market data combined with transactional facilities, in partnership with the London Stock Exchange. It was acquired earlier this year by GL Trade.

Leo McBlain

Mr. McBlain has been Chairman of the Financial Information Forum in NY since 1995. The Financial Information Forum is an industry organization that brings together business and technology executives from exchanges, broker-dealers, vendors and other organizations to address issues related to brokerage industry information and processing systems. FIF with other industry associations have cooperated on industry-wide projects such as Year 2000 testing, decimalization, business continuity planning, market data traffic capacity planning and the recent implementation planning for the SEC’s Regulation NMS. He was chair of FISD from 1990-1995.

He spent thirty-five years at ADP Brokerage Services Group, under various incarnations. First, as VP Marketing where he led sales and marketing efforts which gained competitive wins at 15 major brokerage firms including Merrill Lynch and Shearson (now CitiCorp). He introduced the industry's first PC-based terminal system for professional brokers. In 1987, he moved to VP, Industry Relations where he worked closely with client firms regarding the use of real-time market data and brokerage processing services in conformance to exchange and regulatory policies.

Previously, Mr. McBlain spent twelve years at GTE Information Systems’ Financial Services Division in marketing. Even earlier, he did sales in various engineering and technology companies including Ultronic, Computest and Honeywell.

Seth Merrin

A pioneer in financial services technology, Seth founded his third company, Liquidnet Holdings, in November 1999 at the age of 41. Liquidnet has since established itself as the world’s largest natural liquidity pool for buy-side institutions.

Prior to Liquidnet, Seth co-founded VIE Systems, Inc., a financial services application integration software company, in 1997. VIE was sold to New Era of Networks (NEON) in 1999. In 1985, Seth founded his first company, Merrin Financial, which launched the industry’s first order management, compliance and electronic order routing systems for asset managers. Merrin Financial was sold to ADP in 1996. Seth’s innovations have been profiled in numerous articles in a variety of trade and business publications.

In 1999, Seth was recognized by Wall Street & Technology as one of the "Top 10 Financial Technology Innovators of the Decade." Since 2002, Seth has been named consecutively to Institutional Investor’s "Online Finance 40," the top 40 visionaries leading the way in e-finance and one of the financial industry’s top 5 "tech savvy CEOs."

2005 Lifetime Achievement Award Winner
Bernie Weinstein
Mr. Weinstein founded ILX Systems in 1988 and as its president and chief executive officer, built it over fourteen years from a start-up to be one of the major market data vendors with over 160,000 users globally at firms including Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley and A.G. Edwards. He also managed a major division of Thomson Financial as president of its Sales and Trading Group, which included Beta Systems and Autex. Since joining Cantor Fitzgerald in 2002, he has been responsible for Cantor Market Data, a provider of fixed income market data and commentary, and has overseen its rapid growth. He also serves as Chief Executive Officer of Kleos Managed Services, a subsidiary of eSpeed, an affiliate of Cantor and a major electronic marketplace and trading technology provider for the capital markets. Kleos provides end-to-end managed technology services to the financial industry, including hosting, communications, network management and support, trading solutions and technology licensing.

Prior to founding ILX, Mr. Weinstein was the Chief Information Officer of EF Hutton with responsibility for global information systems (including market data) and telecommunications. Under his direction, EF Hutton introduced in the 1980s a then-revolutionary market data system, AWE (Advanced Workstation for the Executive), which supported market data, information retrieval and office automation functions such as eMail, word processing, and spreadsheets. He was also founder and chief executive of International Brokerage Information Systems, Inc. (IBIS), a subsidiary of the EF Hutton Group,that provided information systems and service to the financial industry globally.