Terrence Duffy, CME Group's chief executive officer, says the innovation embedded in CME's culture takes two forms: product and technology. Duffy recalls trading "ten or 12 products" in the 1980s, "back when 100 percent of the business was done on the trading floor. Today there are thousands of products," he says. That's helped establish the $3.6 billion-in-revenue CME as an elite exchange operator, reaching virtually every country with one of the industry's most significant technological innovations, the Globex electronic trading platform. What Duffy, 58, terms "global uncertainty" and customers' need to manage risks across asset classes brought "record first-quarter results, which included our largest quarterly average daily volume ever, with record volumes in interest rate futures and options, metals futures, and equity options." He says he's now increasing his attention to technology innovation because the name of the game is distribution — not just through linking servers around the world, but also through educating and attracting more customers to CME's products and liquidity. Duffy and president Bryan Durkin sit with prominent academics, including Nobel laureates Robert Merton and Myron Scholes, on the Competitive Markets Advisory Council, a think tank that is part of the CME Group Center for Innovation.
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