BShareBreakroom.com

For years, former board member Aryeh Shender and Don Karel have run a little operation called B Share Breakroom.  The site got hacked.  It’s been offline since April 27.

On the old trading floor at the CME, we had two breakrooms that we could hang out in and shoot the bull while the market raged on.  You could eat in there, be close to the pit, and just talk.  It was nice.  When we moved from the CME to the CBOT, one of the things we missed most was the breakroom.

Many may not know this, but when the CME deumutualized we separated the member trading rights from the equity in the firm.  The quotes you see on the NASDAQ are for the A shares.  If you want to know what a B share is worth, you have to go to the CME website.  As a part of the demutualization agreement, we guaranteed that B shares would be represented on the board.  The theory was that it would at first give the former members input into the exchange, and years down the road would evolve into having actual participants in the marketplace on the board.  We felt that since trading was in the CME’s DNA, it was important to have the entrepreneurial spirit of the individual trader on the board.  B share elections are like political campaigns, and are head to head elections.  We elect our A share directors by acclimation.

Competitive elections are better for boards.

The best laid plans get mutated over time.  B share was sort of a response to that.  Plus, the Yahoo!Message board was a piece of crap.  It gave traders a private forum to interact, renew and make bonds and comment on issues that were important to just us.  As the CME bought the CBOT, and NYMEX, they invited their B share holders onto the forum.  I don’t know if NYMEX has a provate forum, but the CBOT does, and it still exists today.

The CME board was cut from 40 to 19 when I was on it.  I lost a competitive election in 2001.  The first year, CME put the CEO on the board, raising it to 20.  Once CME bought the other two exchanges, it swelled to 33.

Whether you agree with the big board or not, traders haven’t had a place to communicate.  My suggestion is they use the comments thread on this blogpost to interact the way they did on B share.  Once B share is up and running, they can go back there.

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