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Non-Tech : Knight/Trimark Group, Inc. -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: 1-DAY-TRADER who wrote (847)	5/5/1999 7:26:00 PM
From: osman koyuncu	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 10027

Knight/Trimark plots Atlantic crossing Nasdaq market maker sees similar role over there By Emily Church, CBS MarketWatch Last Update: 6:52 PM ET May 5, 1999 Market Snapshot Bond Report JERSEY CITY, N.J. (CBS.MW) -- Knight/Trimark, the leading market market in Nasdaq stocks, is readying an export of its business model to Europe in a $50 million to $100 million expansion plan. The firm (NITE: news, msgs) just opened a 3,000-square-foot office in London to offer European institutions access to U.S. securities, but whether its base of operations will be in the U.K. capital remains to be seen. What is clear are Chief Executive Kenneth Pasternak's plan to make a market in 6,000 European stocks in 15 local markets next year. "We started to do some studies that indicate that retail transactions are between 15 and 20 percent of what they are in the U.S. and growing quite rapidly from very low levels," Pasternak said in an interview with CBS.MarketWatch.com. Most intriguing, perhaps, to Knight/Trimark is the growth in retail trading in Germany. Online discounter ConSors, a recent IPO rocket with over 100,000 customers based in Nuremberg, is drawing notice. See related story. "In Germany alone, there's between 25,000 and 50,000 retail transactions through these discounters alone, which is a pretty incredible number considering there wasn't that much there two years ago," he said. Euro strategy Knight/Trimark expects to make announcements on its Europe strategy in the next 90 days. The announcements could include European partners for the Jersey City-based firm. Knight/Trimark has met with Continental financial firms but has yet to reach an agreement on a broad partnership. "We're looking at being up and operating sometime in the year 2000," Pasternak said. "We haven't really decided if we're going to take any strategic partners. It takes about six months just to get the regulatory OKs and build a trading room. We haven't started to do any of that." Some U.S. discount brokerages have operations in Europe currently. Charles Schwab (SCH: news, msgs) boasts the largest online business in the United Kingdom. Ameritrade (AMTD: news, msgs) has joint ventures in Germany and France. And E-Trade (EGRP: news, msgs) expects to launch an operation in Sweden in the next couple of months. See related story. "We will never be in the retail business ... but it will look like pan-European Knight/Trimark," Pasternak said. "We'll be an execution center. We'll have a particular strong flow bias toward retail and online investors, but we won't exclude other kinds of investors." 'No comment' Knight/Trimark's stock has jumped 106 percent since a recent intraday low on April 19 on optimism that the market maker will continue to increase its share of over-the-counter trading volume. The stock closed up 16 1/2 to 148 1/2 Wednesday. Speculation that Knight/Trimark is a takeover target for large bulge-bracket firms is also pushing the stock upward, some analysts have said. See related story. Pasternak declined to comment on that talk. The jump in Knight/Trimark has boosted the price of Southwest Securities Group (SWS: news, msgs), analysts say. Southwest holds 1.7 million shares of Knight/Trimark.