Competition between market centers is a driving force for innovation, dynamic growth, and reasonable pricing structures. Consolidating the order flow amasses liquidity, sharpens price discovery, and lowers trading costs. Can competition remain vibrant in a consolidated environment? How does inter-market competition play out with respect to trading decisions and listing decisions? What will the primary sources of competition be in the future? What impacts will follow from the NYSEs acquisition of Archipelago, and NASDAQs acquisition of INET? Will exchanges further consolidate in Europe? What does consolidation imply about the efficient use of technology, the effective handling of institutional order flow, and overall market quality? These are some of the questions that were addressed at this conference.

Robert A. Schwartz is Marvin M. Speiser Professor of Finance and University Distinguished Professor in the Zicklin School of Business, Baruch College, CUNY. Before joining the Baruch faculty in 1997, he was Professor of Finance and Economics and Yamaichi Faculty Fellow at New York University's Leonard N. Stern School of Business, where he had been a member of the faculty since 1965. Professor Schwartz received his Ph.D. in Economics from Columbia University. His research is in the area of financial economics, with a primary focus on the structure of securities markets. He has published over 50 refereed journal articles and fifteen books, including The Equity Trader Course (co-authored with Reto Francioni and Bruce Weber) Wiley& Sons, 2006, Equity Markets in Action: The Fundamentals of Liquidity, Market Structure and Trading (co-authored with Reto Francioni) Wiley& Sons, 2004, and Reshaping the Equity Markets: A Guide for the 1990s, Harper Business, 1991 (reissued by Business One Irwin, 1993). He has served as a consultant to various market centers including the New York Stock Exchange, the American Stock Exchange, Nasdaq, the London Stock Exchange, Instinet, the Arizona Stock Exchange, Deutsche Börse, and the Bolsa Mexicana. From April 1983 to April 1988, he was an associate editor of The Journal of Finance, and he is currently an associate editor of the Review of Quantitative Finance and Accounting, the Review of Pacific Basin Financial Markets and Policies, and The Journal of Entrepreneurial Finance& Business Ventures, and is a member of the advisory boards of International Finance and The Journal of Trading. In December 1995, Professor Schwartz was named the first chairman of Nasdaq's Economic Advisory Board, and he served on the EAB until Spring 1999. He is developer, with Bruce Weber, of the trading and market structure simulation, TraderEx (http://www.etraderex.com/).