IC11-004 Trader E-News
TRADER E-NEWS Information Circular IC11004 January 18, 2011 EDMUND J. O’CONNOR, PIONEER IN LISTED OPTIONS AND A FOUNDER OF CBOE Edmund J. O’Connor, key architect of exchange‐listed security options and a founder of the Chicago Board Options Exchange (CBOE) – died on January 17, 2011, at age 85 in Lake Forest, Illinois. In the late 1960s, Mr. O’Connor, a highly successful grain futures trader, served on the board of directors of th e Chicago Board of Trade (CBOT) during a period when grain futures trading was languishing and members were seeking new business avenues for the exchange. In 1969, Mr. O’Connor, then vice chairman of the CBOT, fleshed out and proposed the idea of an options excha n ge in raw blueprint form to the CBOT’s Board of Directors, detailing the general mechanis m by which puts and calls on stocks could be standardized and traded in an open outcry environment for the first time. The Chicago Board Options Exchange in 1973 opened for trading in the small “smoking room” adjacent to the main trading floor of the CBOT with just 911 options contracts changing hands on day one. “Eddie O’Connor represented the kind of raw, indomitable spirit that in the 1960s and 1970s pervaded the Chicago financial community, which had always fought the reputation of being number two,” said CBOE President and Chief Operating Officer Edward Joyce, who knew O’Connor from the formative days of the CBOE. “Looking back, he was a giant, who along with CBOE President Joe Sullivan, thrust Chi cago into an arena that others – even the financial chiefs in New York – thought unimaginable.” "While Ed O'Connor was a trader at heart, he also had both extremely entrepreneurial and practical sides that pushed the derivatives industry in the right direction," Wayne Luthringshausen, Chairman and CEO of the Options Clearing Corporation (OCC) said.
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