Thursday, June 7, 2012

You’ve gotta be kidding: Nasdaq’s comp. plan blasted as too little, too late


Nasdaq CEO Bob Greifeld may be the most hated man on Wall Street, the New York Post reports.. That’s judging by the fiery responses the exchange boss fielded yesterday, less than 24 hours after floating a plan to compensate market makers a paltry $40 million, some of it in discounts, for Nasdaq’s embarrassing botch of the high-profile Facebook public stock sale.

Critics of Greifeld’s plan pulled few punches in blasting the executive’s plan as too little too late.
“They’re not even in the ballpark with what they’re proposing,” Tom Joyce, CEO of Knight Capital, said during an interview with CNBC.  “The number I came up with, that the Street has come up with, is well over $100 million,” Joyce noted.

William O’Brien, CEO of Direct Edge, a rival exchange, urged Greifeld to go back to the drawing board and characterized the exchange’s plans to compensate brokers by offering discounts on trades downright “illegal.”  As it stands now, Greifeld is offering market makers who attempted to complete trades of Facebook at $42 a share, $13.7 million in cash and $26.3 million in trading discounts.


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