In September of last year, Island Holding Company completed its merger with
Instinet Group. Since then, we have worked aggressively to deliver the
benefits of the combined organization to you.
To position ourselves to better serve you, Instinet Group will reorganize
into two separately incorporated subsidiaries that are independently
operated and managed: Instinet, The Institutional Broker; and INET, an
Automated Trading System (ATS).
Instinet, The Institutional Broker, will continue to offer its broad range
of global agency brokerage services to institutional and broker-dealer
clients.
INET will offer professional investors and traders the opportunity for
faster executions and better pricing in one of the largest marketplaces for
NASDAQ-listed securities.
INET will be created by consolidating the Island ECN and Instinet platforms
to form one large limit order book. While we have already increased
interaction between the books since the merger, executing close to 7 billion
shares through cross-system matches, we believe that one consolidated book
will increase liquidity, improving execution quality and providing greater
opportunities for price improvement.
The first external change in preparation for the consolidation will occur on
October 27, 2003. Island will officially change its Market Participant
Identifier (MPID) from 'ISLD' to 'INET'.
The next step in the process is to migrate all order flow to INET. As early
as mid-November, the 'INCA' quotation will be phased out from the
Alternative Display Facility (ADF) and all orders will be represented in a
single marketplace. This migration to INET (currently the Island platform)
will be implemented on a security-by-security basis. As we move further
into the process, we will provide more definitive dates and information.
Most Subscribers will not need to do anything to support these changes.
However, we've prepared a list of frequently asked questions (FAQ) for your
review. To access the FAQ, click the link below or cut and paste it into
your browser's 'Address' field:
http://www.island.com/inet
