Now that we are a little over a year into the economic crisis, are you comfortable that the situation has now stabilized?

The worst is certainly behind us, and recovery in the equities markets has people thinking that real economic recovery can’t be far behind. But if you travel around the world, it’s hard to find meaningful economic recovery outside of Brazil, India, and China. Other countries are talking about GDP growth in the second or third quarter of 2013, which is great, but we have a lot of work to do in the U.S. If the recovery is going to be consumer-led in the United States, it’s very early to be predicting consumer sentiment and confidence.

 

You have 31 listed companies in Brazil. How great is the opportunity in Brazil, and is all that the NYSE platform offers well understood in that market?

There are 32 companies that have access to capital markets outside of Brazil, and 31 of them are listed with us, so our track record speaks for itself. We have broad and deep relationships throughout the country. There are plenty of companies that want to access the U.S. capital markets, and we have the advantage of being in the same time zone.

 

In almost every case in which there is a company listed locally in Brazil as well as on the NYSE, it has added to the liquidity of that company’s underlying security. So the value proposition sells itself, because we have tangible evidence of what happens when you do list. Part of our success in this market is because as developed as the Brazilian equity market has become, it still has a ways to go.

Brazilian companies have become better known to all the U.S. investors that they’re hoping to attract as owners of their stock. There is an enormous pipeline for us there. We’re going to have a lot more Brazilian companies listed in the next two or three years.

 

The NYSE brand has been transformed with the addition of Euronext and Amex. Is it challenging to get that message out within all the different segments?

Our rich history is a blessing a majority of the time, but a lot of people don’t know how much we’ve transformed the business, and it’s our job to communicate it comprehensively. It’s a young public company – the NYSE/Euronext merger was two years ago and the Amex acquisition was a year ago – so in fairness to everybody here, we’re getting better at it, but we still have a long way to go, because small growth companies don’t know we have an interest in them. The fact is, we do; the proof of our value is in the results, and we’ve built a listings platform that now accommodates companies of all shapes and sizes around the world. We just need to do a better job of messaging that.

 

What about the prospects in Latin America?

Outside of Brazil, with a three to five year view, there will be great companies emerging from Chile, and we’ll see a few more from Argentina; Peru, and Columbia. But right now, Latin America is really the Brazil story.

 

The Mexicans are also doing some interesting things where, if it becomes a bit more common to access the public markets, a lot of those companies could benefit greatly by also being listed in the markets here.