New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) CEO Duncan Niederauer spoke with FOX Business Network (FBN) about connectivity issues and re-opening the NYSE following Hurricane Sandy. Niederauer addressed connectivity issues following the storm, saying “we spent most of the morning trying to solve” the connectivity issues, and “that’s all working smoothly. We’ve got over 100 million shares of volume already, so I think we are moving along pretty good.” Niederauer went on to say “I don’t freak out about anything” and that the “overwhelming majority of our orders come from outside the building in the Mahwah data center” where they have “full power,” but that “the very small part of the orders we get from inside of the building, we had issues with phone connectivity and Internet service this morning. We gave them their own phone lines so they could get incoming calls and make outgoing calls. Latest I am hearing is it’s not a problem, so no, no one was freaking out. Don’t worry.”
Excerpts from the interview are below:
On how he thought the market open went:
“Everything opened pretty quickly, it’s been a very smooth market opening. As you can see we are pretty much fully staffed down here. So everything went really smoothly, Volume seems to be pretty good, market is up about half a percent. So, so far so good.”
On any problems they faced prior to the open:
“The problems we had were before the opening in terms of broker connectivity, some people were having trouble with their Blackberries, with Internet service, with phone services. We spent most of the morning trying to solve that and I think we did. In terms of people outside the building. Their connectivity has been tested liberally for the last 24-36 hours, that’s all working smoothly. We’ve got over 100 million shares of volume already, so I think we are moving along pretty good.”
On issues facing connectivity:
“First of all, I don’t freak out about anything, so I don’t really worry about that stuff. Let’s separate fact from fiction, because there’s been a lot of fiction going on in the last couple of days. So the overwhelming majoring of our orders come from outside of the building into the Mahwah data center. We’re not even on generator power in Mahwah, we are on full power…with the DMM community. All the stuff I just talked about in terms of Internet connectivity and things like that. No impact to them at all. So the market making systems, we control those, they control those, that’s been fine. The very small part of the orders we get from inside of the building, we had issues with phone connectivity and Internet service this morning. We gave them their own phone lines so they could get incoming calls and make outgoing calls. Latest I am hearing is it’s not a problem, so no, no one was freaking out. Don’t worry.”
On whether they could have opened the NYSE on Monday and Tuesday:
“We could have. I think it would have been irresponsible in the light of what we know. We certainly could have operated electronically, and what the industry clearly told us on Sunday was please don’t open electronically, cause we are going to have to put a lot of our people in harm’s way. So let’s not do that. Do I wish the industry and we came to a decision earlier on Sunday, sure, but we all made the right decision. It would have been irresponsible and dangerous to be open Monday and Tuesday.”
On the reason they chose not to open the NYSE on Monday and Tuesday:
“I think more about human safety, first and foremost. I don’t think the market would have operated fluidly. But that’s neither here nor there. What the industry was saying was, guys, even if you think you are running from Chicago, we still have to send people into work in the metropolitan New York area and we don’t want to do that please don’t make us do that. And you know, they were right. So I think the industry made the right decision. So we are here today. We’ll be here tomorrow and Friday. And we should have the building back on regular power, but even if we don’t the generator is fine.”
