Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the MarketAxess Annual Meeting of Stockholders. I would now like to turn the call over to Carlos Hernandez, Chairman of the Board of Directors of MarketAxess. Please go ahead, sir.
Thank you, operator. Good morning and welcome. It's now 9:00 A.M., the MarketAxess Annual Meeting of Stockholders will please come to order. On behalf of the board of directors, I'd like to welcome you to our 2026 Annual Stockholders Meeting and express our thanks for your attendance to this meeting. The polls are now open. You may submit your votes through the web portal in connection with the proposals being voted on during the meeting. That we may address the questions from our stockholders of record, we ask that you submit them now via the web portal. We will address any questions that directly relate to a particular proposal at the appropriate time during the meeting. We will save general questions for the question-and-answer period following the formal business of the meeting.
We are pleased to have our board of directors present at the meeting. Also present for the meeting are the company's Chief Executive Officer, Chris Concannon; the company's General Counsel and Corporate Secretary, Scott Pintoff; the company's Chief Financial Officer, Ilene Fiszel Bieler; Jeffrey Galota from PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP, our independent registered public accounting firm, and Tracy Oats from Broadridge Financial Solutions. Broadridge has been appointed Inspector of Elections to examine and tabulate proxies and ballots at this meeting. You will find the combined proxy statement and annual report, along with the meeting rules, posted in the web portal you are currently using to access this meeting. The meeting will proceed as follows: we'll present the proposals to be acted upon by stockholders at the meeting. We will answer any questions related to the proposals.
After answering any questions related to the proposals, we will proceed with the vote on each matter to be acted upon by stockholders at the meeting. Following the announcement of results, we will respond to general questions submitted through the designated field on the web portal. Following the Q&A session, the meeting will then be adjourned. Scott Pintoff, our General Counsel and Corporate Secretary, will now conduct the annual meeting as he relates to the proposals to be voted upon by the stockholders.
Thank you, Carlos. All stockholders of record at the close of business on April 13th, 2026, were given notice of the meeting by United States mail on or about April 29th, 2026, and I have an affidavit to that effect for inclusion in the record of this meeting. The preliminary report of the Inspector of Elections is that more than 90% of the total number of shares outstanding and entitled to vote are present at this virtual meeting or by proxy at this meeting, constituting a quorum. A quorum being present, this meeting is declared open to proceed with its business. The first proposal to be voted upon today is the election of 12 directors to serve until the annual meeting in 2027.
The directors nominated for election are Carlos Hernandez, Christopher Concannon, Nancy Altobello, Steven Begleiter, Jane Chwick, Douglas Cifu, William Krueger, Courtney Gibson, Roberto Hoornweg, Richard Ketchum, Emily Portney, and Kenneth Schiciano. The second proposal is to ratify the appointment of PricewaterhouseCoopers as the company's independent registered public accounting firm for the fiscal year ending December 31st, 2026. The third proposal is to approve on an advisory basis the compensation of the company's named executive officers as described in the proxy statement. The fourth proposal, if properly presented, is a stockholder proposal from John Chevedden. The board unanimously recommends that you vote for the election of nominees for director listed in the company's proxy statement for proposals two and three, and against proposal four, the stockholder proposal, for the reasons stated in the proxy statement. Mr. Glenn Beatty will now have three minutes to present Mr. Chevedden's proposal on his behalf.
Operator, please open Mr. Beatty's line, and Mr. Beatty, please proceed.
Can you hear me?
Yes.
Proposal 4, reasonable shareholder ability to call for a special shareholder meeting sponsored by John Chevedden. Shareholders ask the board of directors to take the steps necessary to amend the appropriate company governing documents to give the owners of a combined 10% of the outstanding common stock the power to call a special shareholder meeting. Such a special shareholder meeting can be an easy one to convene online shareholder meeting. There shall be no unnecessary poison pill discriminatory rule to require ownership of shares for a specific period of time in order for shares to participate in calling for a special shareholder meeting, and no unnecessary requirement that most such shareholders be record holders. MarketAxess shareholders need an attainable right for 10% of shareholders to call for a special shareholder meeting. MarketAxess currently has what might be called a placebo right to call for a special shareholder meeting.
MarketAxess requires the backing of 25% of shares to call for a special shareholder meeting. There is now a big rush for companies to adopt the 25% figure because companies are wise and know that the 25% figure is a safe haven, and a special meeting will never occur. More than 100 companies have voted on the special shareholder meeting topic, and not even one of these 100 companies has ever cited an example of special shareholder meeting ever occurring at any company that has the 25% figure. To make matters worse, MarketAxess disqualifies a substantial block of shares from being part of that 25% figure. More than 100 companies have voted on the special shareholder meeting topic, and not one of these 100 companies has ever cited an example of special shareholder meeting ever occurring at any company that disqualifies a substantial block of its shares.
Please vote for an attainable shareholder right to call for a special shareholder meeting, Proposal 4. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Beatty. The board of directors recommends a vote against the proposal for the reasons stated in the proxy statement. At this time, we will now answer any questions from stockholders related to the proposals. We have received no questions from stockholders that relate to the proposals. As a reminder, there will be a general question-and-answer session following the closing of the polls. We will now proceed to vote on the nominees for director and the other proposals. Any stockholder who hasn't yet voted or wishes to change their vote may do so now by clicking on the voting button on the web portal and following the instructions there. It's not necessary to take any further action if you've already sent in your proxy, unless you wish to change your vote.
Now that the stockholders have had the opportunity to vote, I hereby declare the polls closed. According to the preliminary report of the Inspector of Elections, all the nominees for director have been elected as directors of the company. The selection of PricewaterhouseCoopers as the company's independent registered public accounting firm for the year ended December 31st, 2026, has been ratified. The compensation of the company's named executive officers, as disclosed in the proxy statement, has been approved by advisory vote. The stockholder proposal has not been approved. The final results of the voting will be filed with the SEC on current report on Form 8-K. At this time, we will now answer any general questions from stockholders. We have received one question. Let me remind you that today's meeting may include forward-looking statements. These statements represent the company's belief regarding future events that, by their nature, are uncertain.
The company's actual results and financial condition may differ materially from what is indicated in those forward-looking statements. For a discussion of some of the risks and factors that could affect the company's future results, please see the description of risk factors in our annual report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31st, 2025. The first question is, Please give two examples of how MarketAxess is using AI to increase profits. Chris Concannon, our CEO, will answer that question.
Thank you for your question. As I explained on our most recent earnings call regarding our deployment of AI, we have deployed AI across our firm, made it available to employees and technologists in particular. We're seeing benefits of AI in productivity more broadly, particularly in its application in our tech development process. We've also used AI longstanding, both machine learning and now AI, in our development of our data products. We are benefiting from AI in both data products and productivity, particularly in our tech organization. Thank you.
Thank you, Chris. We have no further questions. We will now proceed to closing the meeting.
Okay. The matters that this meeting was called to consider have been completed. Thank you very much for your attendance this morning. We look forward to hosting the 2027 stockholder meeting next year. This meeting is hereby adjourned.
This concludes today's conference call. You may now disconnect.