William R. Harts is well known in the financial services industry as an authority on financial markets, trading and applied technology.

He has most recently held the position of Executive Vice President for Corporate Strategy for The Nasdaq Stock Market, Inc. where his responsibilities included the development of strategic initiatives for the world's largest stock market. Prior to that he was Managing Director of Strategic Business Development for the Global Equity Division of Salomon Smith Barney with responsibility for the firm's partnerships, joint ventures and investments as well as market structure developments relating to equity trading. Before taking on that role, Mr. Harts was co-head of the firm's Global Program Trading operation, with responsibility for desks in New York, London and Tokyo. He began at SSB in September 1993 after working at Lehman Brothers where he established an automated market making and trading operation for the Worldwide Equities Division. Prior to that, he worked at Goldman, Sachs & Co. in their Quantitative Strategies Group.

Mr. Harts has been a featured speaker on market structure issues at many industry forums. He has spoken before the Securities Industry Association Market Structure Conference, the Pace University Center for the Study of Equity Markets' Securities Industry Conference, and has been a panelist at the Baruch College Zicklin School of Business' Regulation of U.S. Equity Markets Conference. He was a member of the SEC Advisory Committee on Market Information.

Mr. Harts served as a Director and Vice Chairman and member of the Board of the Philadelphia Stock Exchange from 1994 through 1999. He has been a member of the Board of Directors of JapanCross, an electronic trading system for Japanese equities. He has served on the boards of BRUT and MarketXT, two electronic communications networks, as well as the managing advisory committee for Primex, an electronic auction facility of Nasdaq.

Before coming to Wall Street, Mr. Harts worked in the information technology industry for more than twelve years and is the developer of a best selling data communications software package. His articles on various aspects of the computer industry have been published internationally in PC Magazine.