And since the early 1990s, they’ve squared off in separate corners of the institutional brokerage arena: Lutnick, a college tennis ace, as CEO of New Yorkbased Cantor Fitzgerald; Foley, a three-time NCAA Division III champion in the 1,500-meter run, as a trading products executive at Bloomberg. Last month the classmates reunited when Lutnick lured Foley, CEO of Bloomberg’s Tradebook platform since 1995, to become president of Cantor’s ESpeed technology spin-off. Foley, 44, will spearhead ESpeed’s expansion out of electronic fixed-income trading and into asset classes including equities, mortgage-backed securities and foreign exchange. “The infrastructure is built, paid for, global, in all the banks -- and now we have a great opportunity to innovate in new markets,” says Foley.
The diversification began before Foley’s arrival. Electronic volume in ESpeed’s new nonequity products jumped to $133 billion in the first quarter of this year from $21 billion in fourth-quarter 2003 (still a tiny fraction of the firm’s $8.3 trillion first-quarter total); stock trades rose from 56 million to 85 million shares. Foley brings “a real focus on the equity products,” says Lutnick, though the new ESpeed president will also have a hand in managing and developing other product lines. “I’m experienced in all the markets that ESpeed dominates or has the opportunity to dominate,” says Foley, who traded U.S. government securities at Drexel Burnham Lambert before joining Bloomberg as a fixed-income product specialist in 1990. Foley isn’t ESpeed’s only new recruit. Paul Saltzman, longtime general counsel of the Bond Market Association, joined the firm June 1 as chief operating officer, reporting to Foley. “ESpeed has learned all the lessons about how to innovate,” Foley says. “We’re bringing in new leadership to take that knowledge and experience into new markets.”
