Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by.
Good morning, everybody. I'm Jeff Sprecher. I'm the Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Intercontinental Exchange. It's my pleasure to welcome you here to our 2017 Annual Meeting. This meeting is largely procedural, but I want to take a moment before we start to highlight our focus on creating shareholder value by the way we deal with our customers. Not only is this built into the culture of the way we operate our company, but it's at the foundation in how we make decisions regarding governance to compensation to the way we affect our strategy. As a result of the focus, we've now created our 11th consecutive year of record revenues and record earnings as an 11-year public company. Each year as a public company, we've delivered growth. By focusing on our customers, we've built a global network of exchanges and clearing houses and mission-critical information.
While this was considered a unique model a couple of years ago, we're now seeing the convergence of trading and risk management along with the symbiotic nature of data that's fueling these key functions. We're delivering continued growth in our listings business, where the New York Stock Exchange is the premier listing venue in the world, and it has now served 28 out of the last 31 $1 billion or greater IPOs. ICE's trading and clearing segment is uniquely grown year in and year out, despite dramatic impact of forces like the financial crisis, the zero interest rate policies around the world, and high and low energy prices. Last year, 2016 was no exception.
While many of our commodity markets have natural volatility, we've simply not waited for cyclical change to drive our business, and we've enhanced our businesses with new products, with things like in clearing and data and other kinds of solutions for customers. This year, we're off to a strong start, and we believe our shareholders will continue to benefit from the balanced geographic product and customer diversification that we've built into the company. Because we're not levered to any one cyclical trend or geography, we've led our space for growth for more than a decade. Before I start the formal portion of this meeting, I want to recognize the Intercontinental Exchange Board of Directors who are in the room here with us for their dedication and their hard work with us as managers throughout the year.
Their expertise and the efforts that they've given us have produced strong results. We have an excellent track record of corporate governance. To expand on that record, we've recently added three new board members that bring unique skills and a diversity of expertise in areas like technology, cybersecurity, international finance, and public policy. Finally, certainly not least, I want to thank our shareholders for your continued confidence. We appreciate the dialogue that we have with you. We really strive to earn your continued support by trying to deliver best-in-class results. In order to comply with the legal requirements for the voting process at this annual meeting, you'll notice that it's relatively formal. As a result, you can probably tell that I'm reading from a script. Those in the room can see that I'm having to wear my glasses.
After the announcement of the voting results and the adjournment of the meeting, the board of directors and I and the management team, along with representatives of Ernst & Young, will be available in the room to answer questions for those that are with us live today. I now want to introduce to you the directors of Intercontinental Exchange and the executive officers who are here with us today. If I could ask you all to stand when I call your name. First, let me introduce our board of directors. Ann Cairns is here. Charles Crisp, Duriya Farooqui, Jean-Marc Forneri, Lord Hague of Richmond, Fred Hatfield, Fred Salerno, Judy Sprieser, Vincent Tese.
Also with us is much of the senior management team, Chuck Vice, our President and Chief Operating Officer, Scott Hill, our Chief Financial Officer, David Goone, our Chief Strategy Officer, Johnathan Short, our General Counsel, Ben Jackson, our Chief Commercial Officer, Lynn Martin, our Chief Operating Officer of ICE Data Services and President of that unit, Kelly Loeffler, our Senior Vice President of Corporate Communications, Marketing, and Investor Relations, Doug Foley, our Senior Vice President of Human Resources and Administration, Andrew Surdykowski, who's our Senior Vice President and Associate General Counsel and who will be helping me run the meeting today, Kevin McClear, our Chief Risk Officer, and Dean Mathison, our Chief Accounting Officer. Also in attendance from Ernst & Young LLP is Ken Marshall, Greg Stout, and Megan Duffy.
One of our directors, Tom Noonan, is not in attendance today because he's attending his son's college graduation. Tom is participating with us via the webcast. Welcome, Tom. I now want to move to appoint Andrew Surdykowski as the secretary of the meeting to record the proceedings. Sid Rodrigue of Broadridge, is Sid in the room? Yes. Has been appointed as the Inspector of Elections for this meeting. Sid, how many years has this been for you? That's what I was thinking, too. He says, "Gosh." He's inspected many of our elections. He's here to, among other things, ascertain the number of shares of ICE's common stock outstanding and the voting power of each. He's going to determine the shares represented at the meeting and the validity of the proxies and of the ballots.
He's going to count all the votes and the ballots, he's going to certify the number of shares represented at the meeting and vote for each of the proposals. The Inspector of Elections has taken and signed an oath to faithfully execute those duties with strict impartiality and according to the best of his ability. Andrew Surdykowski will now say a few words about our 2017 annual meeting procedures. Andrew?
Thank you, Jeff. To conduct this meeting in an orderly fashion, we respectfully direct your attention to the rules of conduct you received when you entered the meeting room. Any stockholder or proxy holder wishing to address the meeting should, at the appropriate time, wait to be acknowledged by the chairman. We thank you in advance for helping us conduct the 2017 annual meeting in an orderly fashion.
Doesn't look like a particularly rowdy crowd out here, I think we'll be okay. Thank you, Andrew. We're going to proceed now with the formal items of business. The record date stockholder list, affidavit of distribution, proxy vote report, and oath of Inspector of Elections will be available for inspection throughout the meeting at the registration table. In addition, copies of the notice of annual meeting and proxy statement related to this meeting are also available at the registration table. Only stockholders of record as of March 21, 2017, are entitled to vote at this meeting. The only securities that can be voted at the meeting are shares of ICE's common stock, which will vote together as a single class on the matters presented to the stockholders at this meeting. The voting requirements for each of the items on the agenda are described in the proxy statement.
Let me now again ask Mr. Surdykowski to read our forward-looking statement disclosure and voting share information.
Thank you. The matters discussed at this meeting may include certain forward-looking statements that represent ICE's expectations or beliefs. These statements involve substantial risks and uncertainties that may be beyond our control. Our actual results could differ materially from those projected in these forward-looking statements. Additional information concerning factors that could cause actual results to be materially different is contained in the Risk Factors section of our annual report on Form 10-K and elsewhere in ICE's filings with the SEC. We encourage you to read those materials. Each of you should have registered at the front door when you came in and indicated on the sign-in sheet whether you plan to vote in person here at the meeting. If you've already voted by proxy, you do not need to vote in person at this meeting unless you wish to change your vote.
The sign-in sheet indicates that no stockholders intend to vote in person at this meeting. Nevertheless, if anyone would like to vote in person, Mr. Rodrigue can give you a blank proxy card to use as a ballot. Would anyone like to vote in person? Okay. Based on that fact, there are no shares to be voted in person at the annual meeting. I have the following information regarding the number of shares to be voted today. As of the record date of March 21st, 2017, there were 593,453,729 shares of ICE's common stock outstanding and entitled to vote at this annual meeting. Such shares constitute all of the shares of ICE's capital stock entitled to vote at the meeting, and record holders of such shares are entitled to one vote for each share held as of the record date.
The presence in person or by proxy of a majority of the shares of ICE's common stock outstanding and entitled to vote at the meeting are required for a quorum. Represented at the meeting by proxy are, with regard to each of the proposals, at least 530,303,800 shares, which is at least 89.3% of the total number of shares outstanding and entitled to vote. The proxies may be voted by Scott Hill, Johnathan Short , or Andrew Surdykowski. Based on this information, a quorum is present, and we can now proceed with the business of the meeting as set forth in the notice of annual meeting and proxy statement.
Great. Thank you, Andrew. The notice of annual meeting and proxy statement notes nine items of business that we're going to vote on by the stockholders today. It's now, let's call it, 8:43 A.M. on May 19th, 2017, and I'm going to formally declare the polls open for voting on the proposals described in proxy statement. The board of directors has recommended that you vote for each of the proposals number one, two, four, five, six, and seven, and eight, and has suggested that you vote annual for proposal number three, and against proposal number nine, which sets forth the stockholder proposal regarding the preparation of a report assessing ESG market disclosure expectations.
The first item on our agenda is the election of our board, consisting of Ann Cairns, Charles Crisp, Duriya Farooqui, Jean-Marc Forneri, Lord Hague of Richmond, Fred Hatfield, Thomas Noonan, Frederic Salerno, Judith Sprieser, Vincent Tese, and me, Jeff Sprecher, to serve as directors of Intercontinental Exchange Incorporated. If elected, they'll serve a one-year term expiring at the 2018 annual meeting of stockholders or until his or her earlier resignation or removal. You can find more information about each of the director nominees in the proxy statement. The board has recommended that you vote for each of these nominees. Let me ask the audience, is there any discussion regarding these director nominees? Great. We'll now proceed to the next item on the agenda, which is the second item. That is an advisory vote on our executive compensation as set forth in the proxy statement.
The board has recommended that you vote for the advisory resolution approving the compensation of our executive officers as set forth in the proxy statement. Are there any questions regarding the advisory vote on compensation? I'm looking at our officers. Fortunately, none of them have asked to speak on their own compensation. The third item on the agenda. They are happy to speak to me privately. The third item on the agenda is the advisory vote on the frequency and the future advisory votes on executive compensation as set forth in the proxy statement. The board recommends that you vote for conducting an annual advisory vote on the compensation of our named officers. Are there any questions in the room on the advisory vote on the frequency of future votes on compensation? Great.
Fourth item on the agenda is the approval of our 2017 Omnibus Employee Incentive Plan. You can find more about this plan, the 2017 plan, as set forth in our primary proxy statement. The board recommends that you vote for the 2017 Omnibus Employee Incentive Plan. Any questions regarding the plan? Great. The fifth item on our agenda will be the approval of an amendment to our 2013 Omnibus Non-Employee Director Incentive Plan to add an aggregate annual compensation limit. You can find more information on the amendment to our 2013 Non-Employee Director Plan as set forth in the proxy statement. The board has recommended that you vote for the amendment to this 2013 Omnibus Non-Employee Director Incentive Plan. Did you title this, Andrew? It could really use something a little hippier. Are there any questions regarding the amendment to our 2013 Non-Employee Director Incentive Plan? Great.
Our directors are also sitting quite quietly. The sixth item on our agenda is the approval and the adoption of our Fourth Amended and Restated Certificate of Incorporation, which updates and streamlines references to our national securities exchange subsidiaries, their members, and the holding companies that control these exchanges, and it deletes references to certain other subsidiaries, and all this is described in the proxy statement. The board has recommended that you vote for the adoption of our Fourth Amended and Restated Certificate of Incorporation with the aforementioned updates. Let me ask the room, are there any questions regarding the adoption of the Fourth Amended and Restated Certificate of Incorporation as it relates now to this proposal, which is proposal six? Great.
The seventh item on our agenda is an approval and adoption of our Fourth Amended and Restated Certificate of Incorporation to remove an obsolete provision that cross-references a section of our bylaws that was deleted after the sale of our Euronext business in 2014, and that's also described in the proxy statement. The board has recommended that you vote for the adoption of the Fourth Amended and Restated Certificate of Incorporation and the aforementioned updates. Let me ask the room if there's any questions regarding the adoption of our Fourth Amended and Restated Certificate of Incorporation as it relates to this proposal, which is proposal seven. All right. The eighth item on the agenda is the ratification of the appointment of Ernst & Young as our independent registered public accounting firm for fiscal year 2017.
As set forth in the proxy statement, the audit committee of our board of directors appointed Ernst & Young as our independent registered public accounting firm for the fiscal year December 31, 2017. The audit committee and the board recommend that you ratify their appointment. As mentioned earlier, the representatives of Ernst & Young are with us today. They conveniently went to the back row, by the way, for those that are listening, to respond to any questions related to the ratification of appointment. By the way, we will all find them if we want to talk to them, right? Let me proceed to the next item, and it's the ninth and final item on our agenda, and it's a vote on a stockholder proposal regarding the preparation of a report to assess ESG market disclosure expectations if properly presented.
The proposal reads as follows, resolved that the shareholders request that the board of directors prepare a report assessing the current global expectations by investors for ESG market disclosure and report to shareholders by November 2017 its findings and the board's recommended steps, if any, or its reasons for declining to make recommendations, if any, for encouraging ESG disclosure in the markets where Intercontinental Exchange, Inc. does business. The report should be prepared at a reasonable cost, omitting proprietary information. As required by the Securities and Exchange Commission, the proponent of the stockholder proposal or its representative will present this proposal, and we're going to allow the representative five minutes. Is there a representative of shareholder proposal Domini Impact Equity Fund at the meeting today? Okay.
At this time, I want to turn the meeting over to Mr. David Stewart, who's a representative of the stockholder proponent, Domini Impact Equity Fund. If you don't mind grabbing a microphone, introduce yourself, and please present your proposal.
Thank you. Good morning. My name is David Stewart. I am here on behalf of the Domini Impact Equity Fund to move proposal number nine, asking our board to prepare a report assessing the current global expectations by investors for environmental, social, and governance for ESG market disclosure, including recommendations for encouraging ESG disclosure in the markets where Intercontinental Exchange does business. This week, the New York Stock Exchange marks a major milestone, 225 years. Today, we ask our board to take a moment to look to the future and to envision the capital markets of the 21st century. Our markets are driving development around the world on a scale that was unimaginable 200 years ago. Climate change, water scarcity, human rights, wealth inequality, access to medicines, access to capital, all of these things, all of these issues, and many more are present in every investor's portfolio.
We need a broader conception of risk and opportunity if today's markets are going to continue to drive broad-based wealth creation into the future. Thankfully, we are seeing a sea change among the world's stock exchanges on sustainability-related disclosures. Today, largely to meet investor demands, 40 stock exchanges around the world have issued ESG guidance or have committed to do so. 12 stock exchanges maintain listing standards requiring some form of sustainability disclosure from listed companies. For example, the London Stock Exchange just issued comprehensive ESG guidance for its members. Prior to that, it required all listed companies on its main exchange to report total greenhouse gas emissions. The Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing Limited recommends issuers disclose company performance on over a dozen sustainability criteria. The Johannesburg Stock Exchange asks issuers to complete on a comply-or-explain basis, one integrated report that combines both financial and ESG information.
The list goes on and on. In the U.S., we have always boasted that we have the most transparent and efficient capital markets in the world, but we are falling behind. Investors need better information to understand the 21st-century risks and opportunities. The Sustainable Stock Exchanges Investor Working Group now represents more than $7 trillion in assets under management. Nasdaq has helped to lead a process at the World Federation of Exchanges that resulted in formal guidance on sustainability factors for all of its stock exchange members. Nasdaq is also rolling out formal ESG guidance to its exchanges in Europe and is poised to do so in the U.S. Where is the New York Stock Exchange in all of this?
Prior to its acquisition by Intercontinental Exchange, the New York Stock Exchange joined the Sustainable Stock Exchanges Initiative and pledged to work with issuers to improve ESG performance and reporting. ICE has reaffirmed its support for that initiative, but it also appears to have taken a few steps backwards. Members of the Sustainable Stock Exchanges Initiative committed to deliver ESG guidance by the end of 2016. Intercontinental Exchange has not made any such commitment. ICE also appears to have pared back its internal expertise on these issues. Domini thanks ICE for the constructive dialogue on this proposal, for the detailed response provided by the board in the proxy statement, and for publishing resources on its website for issuers to enhance their disclosures. These are all welcome steps in the right direction, and Domini looks forward to continuing these discussions.
Domini chose to maintain the proposal on the proxy today to send a clear signal that more is needed and to ensure that this progress continues with a sense of urgency. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Stewart. We do appreciate the time you took to prepare that and present it to us. I will tell you that personally, we appreciate the manner in which your firm has engaged with us. Let me take a minute to share the board's position on this as outlined in our proxy statement. Management team and the board of directors of ICE are committed to corporate responsibility. We recognize the importance of environmental, social, and governance issues. As a result, we published our first sustainability report in March 2016. We've now followed this with our second report, which we've published in March 2017 to detail many of the actions related to corporate responsibility, governance, and environmental initiatives. You can now find these reports on our website.
As Mr. Stewart mentioned, we're members of the World Federation of Exchanges Sustainability Working Group and the UN Sustainable Stock Exchanges initiative. Both of these groups have recently published guidance and recommendations on ESG disclosure. They frequently conduct surveys regarding ESG matters. We also created a dedicated section on our website that provides easily accessible central repository for issuers and the public to locate these types of third-party ESG resources. For this reason, we believe that the proposal regarding the preparation of a report assessing ESG market disclosure expectations is not needed. For additional information on our continuing ESG efforts, I'd like to point everyone to the opposition statement of the board of directors in our proxy statement. The board has recommended that you vote against the proposal. Are there any questions from the audience regarding the shareholder proposal? Great.
If anyone would like to vote in person, Mr. Rodrigue , who's sitting in the back, can give you a blank proxy card to use as a ballot. Is there anyone in the room that intends to vote in person that hasn't already voted or wants to change their vote? Great. Thank you. Johnathan?
Now that all of the proposals have been presented as proxy representing shares at the meeting, I hereby vote the shares that I represent through proxy and authorize the delivery of a ballot and corresponding proxies to the Inspector of Elections so that the shares represented thereby shall be voted in accordance therewith with respect to Proposal One through Proposal Nine.
Great. Thank you, Johnathan. That concludes the voting on the proposals on the agenda. It is now 8:51 A.M. on May 19th, 2017, and the polls for these matters are officially closed. We are now going to announce the results of the voting. Mr. Surdykowski , do you have vote totals?
Yes. Before reading the vote totals, I would like to state that we have a sworn affidavit of distribution from Broadridge Financial Solutions. The affidavit states that Broadridge caused the mailing of the information relating to the annual meeting on March 30th, 2017. The information was delivered to stockholders of record as of the close of business on March 21st, 2017. The voting results are as follows. For each director nominee received more votes cast for such nominee's election than votes cast against such nominee's election, and therefore Ann Cairns, Charles Crisp, Duriya Farooqui, Jean-Marc Forneri, Lord Hague of Richmond, Fred Hatfield, Thomas Noonan, Frederic Salerno, Jeffrey Sprecher, Judith Sprieser, and Vincent Tese are duly elected as directors of the company.
483,968,505 shares were voted in favor of the second item on the agenda, which is the affirmative vote of the majority of votes cast for or against the advisory resolution on our executive compensation. The advisory resolution on executive compensation is approved. 457,115,951 shares were voted in favor of annually for the third item on the agenda, which is the affirmative vote of the majority of votes cast for annually, biannually, or triennially on the advisory resolution on the frequency of future votes on executive compensation. Annually has been approved as the frequency of future votes on executive compensation. 483,222,427 shares were voted in favor of the fourth item on the agenda, which is the affirmative vote of the majority of votes cast for or against the approval of the 2017 Omnibus Employee Incentive Plan. The 2017 Omnibus Employee Incentive Plan is approved.
444,564,650 shares were voted in favor of the fifth item on the agenda, which is the affirmative vote of the majority of votes cast for or against the approval of the amendment to the 2013 Omnibus Non-Employee Director Incentive Plan. The amendment to the 2013 Omnibus Non-Employee Director Plan is approved. 528,720,514 shares were voted in favor of the sixth item on the agenda, which is the affirmative vote of at least 66 and two-thirds % of all outstanding shares of our common stock entitled to vote at this meeting. The adoption of our Fourth Amended and Restated Certificate to update and streamline references to our national securities exchange subsidiaries, their members, and the holding companies that control such exchanges and delete references to certain other subsidiaries is approved.
528,798,558 shares were voted in favor of the seventh item on the agenda, which is the affirmative vote of at least 66 and two-thirds % of all outstanding shares of our common stock entitled to vote at the meeting. The adoption of the Fourth Amended and Restated Certificate to remove an obsolete provision cross-referencing a section of our bylaws that was deleted after the sale of Euronext business in 2014 is approved. 524,484,288 shares were voted in favor of the eighth item on the agenda, which is the affirmative vote of the majority of votes cast for or against the proposal to ratify the appointment of Ernst & Young as independent registered public accounting firm for the fiscal year ending December 31st, 2017. The appointment of Ernst & Young is ratified.
48,365,211 shares were voted in favor of the ninth item on the agenda, which is not the affirmative vote of the majority of votes cast for or against the stockholder proposal regarding the preparation of a report assessing ESG market disclosure expectations. The stockholder proposal is not approved. The final vote results will be filed with the SEC on a current report on Form 8-K in the next few days. The certificate and report of the Inspector of Elections, which contains the vote totals, will be filed with the minutes of this meeting.
Great. Thank you, Andrew. Thank you all for your votes. We'd now like to adjourn the formal portion of the meeting. Do I have a motion?
Adjourn the meeting.
I second the motion. Great. All in favor of adjournment say aye, please.
Aye.
Great, thank you. Any opposed, say no. Okay, good. The annual shareholders meeting is now adjourned, and that concludes the announced items for the meeting as specified in the notice of annual meeting and proxy statement. I'm now going to open the floor up to questions from our shareholders, if interested. In doing so, I'll ask you that you reference the rules of conduct that were provided today. This question and answer session is being webcast. If you'd like to ask a question in public, please step forward to the microphone in the center of the aisle and introduce yourself, and please speak clearly so that people listening on the webcast can hear you.
As I mentioned earlier, the ICE Board of Directors and our management team intend to mingle through the audience following the meetings to allow those shareholders that would like to ask a more private question so they can do that directly of us. Now I'll ask if anybody wants to step forward to the microphone and ask a public webcast question, please. Good morning.
Good morning, Mr. Sprecher. Thank you. Congratulations once again for you and your directors for your outstanding performance.
Thank you. That's very kind of you.
As a securities attorney, I want to raise a number of questions regarding the core risks to the business.
Do you think I need to be represented by counsel?
I am counsel.
Okay.
I've been a security By the way, background,
There's a lot of lawyers in this room, by the way.
Yeah, I'm sure of that. I've been a securities attorney for 45 years, an expert witness and consultant for 25 years. The two risks that I have in mind are transaction tax and litigation relating to data.
On transaction tax, as you know, in the last session, Senator Sanders proposed, there have been proposals to enact a transaction tax. There's been a fair amount of commentary about that. The transaction tax, presumably under optimal circumstances, might raise a half a billion dollars, nowhere near the total deficit that's projected this year. One of the comments raised was, if you're going to go in that route, a value-added tax generally rather than a focused tax might be appropriate. My concern is if there's an indirect tax. The indirect tax is as the high-frequency traders and others leave the market because their profit margin is eliminated, the liquidity is dramatically reduced, and the spreads increase. That is a tax directly on shareholders or traders.
What I would suggest is that a study be performed that would try to measure this indirect tax on participants on the markets. This is significant because the pension funds in the districts or the states in which propose this tax may have a different view when their constituents see what this tax would do to their holdings as fiduciaries. Turning to data. Data is always the subject of litigation because the fair and reasonable standard, and I'm sure you can reference that. My proposal there is different. Having been an employee of the SEC, the SEC does not want to be a utility commission setting rates. We eliminated, in 1975, fixed commission rates. More recently, the commission has used its exemptive authority under 5(2) of the Securities Act of 1933 to eliminate sending out, at the time of an IPO distribution, necessary data.
The final prospectus can be sent 30 days later. The opportunity is there to avoid all this litigation that is endemic to this fair and reasonable standard by proposing to eliminate it. This is a negotiation between the ICE and its users. The new chairman of the SEC and the general standard moving forward is to have this done in the private sector, not as the SEC perform a rate-setting study. That's consistent with past practice on the elimination of commissions. The proposal there is very simple. The ICE files a formal proposal with the SEC asking them to eliminate this standard, this objective standard, and either eliminate it completely or impose some sort of objective standard, avoiding all the litigation cost that inevitably comes with each time that a rate proposal is filed.
Right.
Those are the two core matters that I want to reference. I also think it's important to have some statement, and I think you may have prepared remarks, on whether there is an opportunity with the clearing moving from London under Brexit to European continent to be able to compete either jointly or individually on the European continent. Finally, there are proposals to reconsider key rules in equities, specifically Regulation NMS and ATS.
I'd like your thoughts as to whether the market fragmentation issue driven by those rules can be improved by amendments or reconsideration of those proposals, to see what your views are on that subject. Thank you for your time.
Sure. Thank you. Those are all very topical issues that we're dealing with. Let me just say that I think we have a view that if you tax capital deployment, a government ends up getting less capital deployment which is typically not in the best interest of its society. I think we probably have common ground in terms of our views on that. Amazingly, we've seen around the world where there are these transaction taxes. The market tries to solve for a method, if you will, of deploying capital. Oftentimes, less regulated and less transparent markets form up either in that society or in adjacent societies to allow capital to be deployed efficiently but bypass taxation, and that's never a good thing. Regarding a number of security issues that you brought up. The data is. In our lifetime, we're seeing a great equality of information.
It's really probably the topic of a lot of dinner conversations and cocktail party conversations about the fact that today, anybody can communicate with anybody, and news and information is flowing freely through many sources and in many ways ending up in our hands through our smartphones almost instantaneously. It's a great equality, if you will, of information sharing. On issues related specifically with securities, what we're finding through all the conversation, litigation, debate, discussion that we're having in our industry is that there's a tremendous amount of information that's freely available, and it's really leveled the playing field. The notion of the book "Flash Boys," that there were people that had information ahead of other people and were taking advantage of time differences is quickly coming out of the market because the reality is we all have information instantaneously.
As you alluded to, it's making people that used to profit from those types of trading strategies putting their profitability under pressure because it's really the fact that all of us can simultaneously share thoughts and information. Regulation NMS is a tough one, in that it's going to take the Securities and Exchange Commission to change it. There does seem to be more conversation now about the negative knock-on impacts. There were certainly some positive things that came out of it, which is why it was promulgated. For those that don't follow this in great detail, this is the regulation that linked all the stock exchanges digitally together, and all the broker-dealers together so that everybody has to look for the best price, including looking at your competitor. It had a lot of unintended consequences, including fragmenting markets.
Which has probably not served the investing public, but at the same time, it lowered transaction costs, which probably did serve the investing public. The debate is whether or not we can find some modifications to that would bring back competition and innovation, and create incentives for that type of investment, but still keep transaction costs low, which typically true compensation will do. You could help us, honestly, by expressing your thoughts with the SEC as in comment letters and to the extent you're willing to, because I do think they're going to explore this under the new administration, and hopefully we can improve the way the exchange business works. Thank you very much for your counsel. It's very thoughtful. Please.
Hello.
Good morning.
My name is Myra Burden. I'm a very happy stockholder.
Oh, good. You can stay.
I keep buying your stock because I buy with my heart and with my head. I saw an article in Georgia Trend about you, I'm just like, "I have to own this stock." The rate of the pack is determined by the speed of the leader, I'm very happy with my stock. I just want to know about expanding your brand. Should I buy more stock? What are your future plans for my portfolio?
Thank you. For what it's worth, I could point you to some articles that would probably cause you to sell. I'm glad you saw that particular one. Thank you. Thank you very much. We have a philosophy here because this was a startup company, essentially, many of the people that started the company are sitting in the room here with me, many of the people on our board of directors have been with us since we were just a tiny company. The management and the employee base are shareholders of the company. We own the company like you do and care deeply about its ownership, our interests are aligned with yours in that we want the company to do well, the share price to do well.
There's a certain ethic and pride of ownership that you have when you build something, I think that comes across in the way that we've tried to put the company together. It's allowed us to be somewhat innovative, to maybe take some risks or try some things, many of which have succeeded, some of which have failed, but nonetheless, over time have really built value. I think it's a testament to having people have their incentives aligned and have ownership in what they do, which is very much a part of our culture. Thank you very much for reading that magazine. Please.
What exchanges are you set to buy, or is that a secret or can you tell me? I want to know how much more stuff I need to invest and take money out of my money market and buy an ICE.
That's very kind of you. I cannot say actually what we're going to do, but I will tell you that following this meeting, there is a board of directors meeting where every quarter we get together and we talk about exactly what the best way to create value and what the next moves we should make are. We'll be talking about that later this morning. It's always top of mind on how to make the share price go up and make the company better. Thank you. Anyone else? Well, there's no one else stepping forward, I'll call the meeting officially to a close. We're going to shut the microphones off, and we'll mingle and continue to talk to the people that are in the audience. Thank you all for being here today. It's good to always see some faces I collect. Thank you.