Mission
NASDAQ seeks to enable corporate growth and entrepreneurship by providing listed companies and investors with the highest quality equity market in the world. NASDAQ’s commitment to all of its constituents issuers, investors and traders is anchored by six key operating principles:
Investor confidence: NASDAQ serves the investor first and foremost. The exchange instills confidence through the fairness of its trading environment, its transparency, the quality of its listed companies, its rigorous regulatory oversight and commitment to investor education.
Fairness and competition: NASDAQ provides a high performing, fast and efficient marketplace that supports the trading activity of multiple markets by providing superior functionality on an equal basis, while promoting fair competition.
Governance: NASDAQ seeks to list companies with stringent corporate governance standards standards to which NASDAQ itself adheres that meet strict listing compliance requirements. NASDAQ supports rigorous market regulation ensuring that investors are protected.
Growth and innovation: NASDAQ enables the growth of companies worldwide through the marketplace and is fully committed to innovative financial products and market efficiency.
Transparency: NASDAQ provides investors with extensive and detailed market information, making it the most transparent market in the world.
Reliability: NASDAQ is dedicated to market reliability. Instilling confidence among market participants, investors, issuers and regulators is the highest priority.
Overview
Since its debut in 1971 as the world's first electronic stock market, The NASDAQ Stock Market has been at the forefront of innovation, using technology to bring millions of investors together with the world's leading companies.
Key facts
NASDAQ is the world's largest electronic stock market. With approximately 3,200 companies, it lists more companies than any other US market and handles, on average, a higher share and transaction volume than the next two US exchanges combined.
NASDAQ lists 332 non-US companies including 75 Israeli companies.
NASDAQ companies have a combined market capitalization of approximately $4 trillion. Non-US companies have a combined global market capitalization of $668.5 billion, with an average global market capitalization of $2 billion.
NASDAQ's network receives data from more than 400,000 terminals and workstations around the world, processing up to 15,000 transactions per second, and delivering data throughout the US within 200 milliseconds. On a typical day, NASDAQ processes seven million quotes, three million trades, two million orders, and nearly 1.8 billion shares.
NASDAQ is home to leading companies across all business sectors including technology, retail, communications, financial services, transportation, media and biotechnology.
First Half 2006 Highlights
NASDAQ celebrates its 35th anniversary.
February, April - NASDAQ completes two equity offerings valued at $1.3 billion.
February 6 - NASDAQ completed its purchase of Shareholder.com a platform which facilitates communications between listed companies, their shareholders and the investment community through a comprehensive suite of investor relations services.
May 10 - Liberty Media, a major distributor of TV entertainment programming, changed its listing from the New York Stock Exchange to NASDAQ.
NASDAQ acquired shares of the London Stock Exchange, reaching a 23.5% ownership position.
June 5 - NASDAQ launched IPO Cross, an automated trading facility designed to provide a fair and transparent process to begin secondary trading of initial public offerings, based on supply and demand.
June 6 - NASDAQ agreed to acquire PrimeZone Media Network, a privately held press release newswire and multimedia services firm in order to enhance NASDAQ's investor relations and corporate communications suite.
July 26 - NASDAQ launched the NASDAQ Global Select Market, a new listing tier with rigorous qualification standards and financial and liquidity requirements higher than those required by any other market. A corresponding index to track the new tier that includes approximately 1,200 qualifying companies was also launched.
NASDAQ Israel
In the past five years, nearly 70 percent of foreign companies listing in the US chose the NASDAQ exchange. From an Israeli perspective, the story is well matched. With 75 Israeli companies listed, representing 95 percent of all Israeli companies trading in the US the largest representation of any single nation outside North America NASDAQ is the US "home" for Israeli firms.
In the past two decades, NASDAQ has played a strong supportive role in raising capital for Israel's corporate sector. Since 1999, NASDAQ facilitated 36 Israeli initial public offerings, raising some $2.3 billion, as well as 22 secondary public offerings, raising $2.5 billion. The 75 Israeli companies listed on NASDAQ have a combined market capitalization of over $50 billion.
NASDAQ is committed to supporting its Israeli companies and continues to invest additional resources to help Israeli companies gain access to, and communicate with, international and US investors.
Key events for Israeli companies in 2006:
May 2006 - NASDAQ co-sponsored the largest Israeli investor conference in Tel Aviv in which 35 NASDAQ-listed companies made presentations to global institutional investors.
NASDAQ announced it was launching an index for Israeli companies.
September 2006 - NASDAQ and TASE will hold a joint investor conference in New York for NASDAQ and TASE-listed companies.
Asaf Homossany is Managing Director Israel and Central and Eastern Europe at the NASDAQ Stock Market. Tel: +44 (0)20 7825 5537, Fax: +44 (0)20 7825 5237 or Asaf.Homossany@nasdaq.com