A tech pioneer returns to Wall Street

Thirty years ago Wall Street’s back offices got so overloaded with paperwork that the New York Stock Exchange was forced to curtail its trading hours and even close on certain days so members could try to keep pace.

Robert Hall helped find a technological solution. He was a founder -- and the first chief executive -- of the Securities Industry Automation Corp., the technology utility co-owned by the Big Board and the American Stock Exchange that did away with much of the paper clutter (see story, page 153). After holding senior jobs at the NYSE, IBM Corp. affiliate Satellite Business Systems and Thomson Corp., he retired three years ago. But the 71-year-old got antsy, and now he’s back as president and CEO of HarborsidePlus, a New York company tackling another big operational problem: enabling institutions to buy and sell large blocks of stock anonymously and at reasonable transaction costs. Blending an electronic order-matching system with old-fashioned human trading expertise, the firm has been signing up clients since January and plans a full-scale launch this month, executing trades through affiliated brokerage Harborside Securities. “Like all start-ups, this is turning out to be longer and harder than I expected it to be,” says Hall, who gave up a cushy retirement because he needed “some way to continue to be intellectually stimulated.” That shouldn’t be a problem. “I’m not enjoying my home out in Weston, Connecticut, as much as I’d like,” says Hall, who has taken an apartment in Manhattan to cut down commuting time. “But it’s exciting.”

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