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Competition / Competitors The financial services industry generally, and the securities brokerage business in which we engage in particular, is very competitive, and we expect competition to intensify in the future. We expect to face competition from a number of different sources varying in size, business objectives and strategy. In our various businesses, we compete with the following entities and types of entities, among others: - market makers and other traditional broker-dealers (including many of our own customers) acting as agent or principal; - traditional and electronic trading methods in use on U.S. and international exchanges, including NYSE specialists and the electronic matching systems of international exchanges; - Nasdaq's trading services that enable NASD members to trade electronically in Nasdaq-quoted stocks, such as SelectNet and the planned SuperMontage and SuperSOES structures; - the NYSE's Institutional XPress(TM) and NYSE Direct+(TM) products; - ECNs, electronic brokers and other electronic trading systems, including but not limited to Bloomberg Tradebook, the Island ECN, Archipelago and eSpeed; - automated trade execution services developed by third party vendors for commercialization in a wide range of financial products markets; - trading system software companies; and - consortia comprised of leading financial institutions and service providers, such as BrokerTec Global LLC and EuroMTS.