As CEO of Island ECN, the upstart electronic trading network, he built a wildly successful business that eventually captured 20 percent of Nasdaq trading volume. So when then Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. CEO Sallie Krawcheck called Andresen in early 2000 to offer a senior trading position, he passed. Andresen kept running Island, which surpassed longtime market leader Instinet Group in the business of trading Nasdaq-listed stocks. This summer Instinet bought Island.
On the same morning that a cartoon image of Andresen accompanied The Wall Street Journal ‘s news story about the deal, an e-mail from Krawcheck (who has since been named CEO of Citigroup’s Smith Barney research and private client group) popped up in Andresen’s in box. “Nice picture,” she wrote. “So, do you want to talk now?” Her timing was right, and Andresen, 32, became head of global trading for Bernstein last month, just two weeks after the Instinet merger closed. Andresen’s deliberations may have been made easier by Instinet’s decision to make him only co-COO of the merged firm. Andresen, a onetime day trader, is now eager to prove himself on Wall Street proper. “I am looking forward to demonstrating an ability to succeed not only as an entrepreneur but also as a leader within an established organization. I want to prove I’m not the ECN savant.”
