The electronic exchange, born in early 1997 as an electronic communications network, also been feeling the competitive heat.

FORBES: Magazine Article

During a stint at SunGuard Data Systems in the late 1990s he helped develop Brut, an early electronic communications network, or ECN, that allowed traders to bypass established exchanges and match their buy and sell orders online.

FORBES: About Robert Greifeld

Well the effects of globalisation and our interdependence with other countries, the new network electronic communications means that we're also vulnerable in other ways - cyber attack bringing down the networks, pandemics, influenza, the First World War, DNA's now on the Internet, energy policy - all of these bring insecurities and potential threats to our country quite apart from...

BBC: John Reid MP, Former Cabinet Minister