London, New York, 22 January 2010

TabbFORUM.com Goes Live: Global Capital Markets Community Gains First-Ever Site for Sharing Opinions on Hot-Button Issues and News.

Moving beyond the original Buttonwood Tree on Wall Street and the tickertape linking brokers, investors and exchanges, TABB Group today launched TabbFORUM, the financial markets first-ever website devoted to contributing and sharing opinions covering issues directly affecting the world’s capital markets, from high-frequency trading and regulatory reform, to market structure, transparency and risk affecting the equities and derivatives markets around the world.

As many as 20,000 capital markets professionals have been invited to register for access to TabbFORUM, an online community where members can be quickly updated on current industry issues and have a place to get their voices heard, either anonymously or by name, with the simple click of a mouse.

TabbFORUM has been created for traders, business and IT managers and C-level executives who are manning trading desks and corner suites at banks, broker-dealers, market centers, regulatory agencies, governmental organizations, hedge funds, clearing and settlement firms, technology vendors and key industry associations – from New York and London, to Hong Kong, Tokyo and Singapore.

“Once registered at TabbFORUM, members can share their ideas, read what others are thinking, explore issues, initiate conversations, challenge current positions, influence others and turn their  thoughts into action,” says Larry Tabb, founder and CEO at TABB Group, the capital markets–focused research and consulting firm that developed TabbFORUM.  “When I launched TABB Group in June 2003, I said, ‘Difficult times require new business, technology and management strategies.’  That is truer today than it was six years ago and with TabbFORUM we are extending that vision to the collective intelligence of the capital markets industry around the world.”

TabbFORUM went live today with feature-length commentaries from a rapidly growing list of contributors, including Seth Merrin, CEO, Liquidnet; Peter Lupoff, ex-Millennium and current CEO, Tiburon Capital Management; Till Guldimann, vice chairman, SunGard; Valerie Bannert-Thurner, executive director, FTEN Europe; and Hirander Misra, COO, Chi-X Europe.  Dozens more are in the queue, says Tabb, ready for posting to the site.

“The initial reaction has been outstanding,” said Tabb.  “For years, head traders and senior executives told us that they’ve had something important to say but no centralized place to say it; that they need different types of industry information but felt they couldn’t always trust the source; that they needed a dedicated forum to deliver their opinions the way they wanted them said.  With TabbFORUM, we’re tapping directly into that need.”

Editorial content at TabbFORUM includes fresh streams of written, audio and video commentaries from senior industry players, Q&As with leading market participants, late-breaking industry headlines covering people, market events and firms, charts and statistical data, industry events, white papers, job postings and education and training programs around the world.

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