SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA AND NEW YORK, NEW YORK: June 20, 2006 — Yipes Enterprise Services, Inc. and the Securities Industry Automation Corporation® (SIAC®) — the technology subsidiary of the NYSE Group, Inc. and American Stock Exchange® (AMEX®) — today announced a new Extranet offering connectivity to the Secure Financial Transaction Infrastructure® (SFTI®), which is built around the unique capacity and scalability of the Yipes Ethernet network.

 

Yipes (www.yipes.com), the leading provider of globally managed, end-to-end Ethernet solutions for enterprise customers will begin offering SIAC Extranet connectivity this summer. The Extranet will provide financial services companies high-speed access scalable to 1 Gbps through Yipes' connections into SFTI. Yipes connects directly to seven SFTI Access Centers in the United States. Member firms will be able to access feeds for the Consolidated Trade System (CTS), Consolidated Quote System (CQS), Options Price Reporting Authority (OPRA) market data as well as perform trade executions to the AMEX and NYSE Group.

 

SIAC (www.siac.com) designed, built and operates SFTI, which offers connectivity to NYSE Group, American Stock Exchange, National Market Systems (CT/CQS), OPRA and Shared Data Center (SDCAN) services. Nationally recognized for its resiliency and redundancy, SFTI answers the financial industry need for a data communications infrastructure that is more resistant to man-made and natural disasters, while speeding recovery after a crisis. SFTI is a communications platform of unparalleled diversity and reliability that will carry order flow and other critical data communications through a closed, high-bandwidth, optical and highly available network. SIAC currently supports 750 firms that connect to 16 Exchanges and Market Centers via SFTI and SFTI B2B.

 

Both organizations cited the agreement as a natural expansion of SIAC's established relationship with Yipes as part of the Yipes FinancialConnect! platform. FinancialConnect! is a next generation financial Extranet that supports trade execution, direct market access (DMA), trade order flow and market data aggregation. Using its high-speed gigabit Ethernet network, Yipes provides the financial community with a new platform to improve the speed of trade execution and increase trading volume. More than 300 Providers and Members are currently connected to Yipes FinancialConnect!.

 

"We are pleased to be working with Yipes to provide the" industry with Ethernet-based Extranet connectivity to SIAC via SFTI®, said Marianne Brown, chief executive officer of SIAC. "The growth of electronic trading in recent years has put a greater emphasis on the need for fast, scalable, reliable connectivity at every point of the trading continuum. Yipes' offering is well suited to the needs of today's financial community."

 

"SIAC has always led the way in addressing the changing technology needs of the financial community. We are very pleased to be working with them in establishing a high-performance Extranet and know our guaranteed low latency, low jitter and on-demand scalability are critical assets in today's trading environments," said John Scanlon, Yipes chief executive officer. "SIAC understands the significant impact of electronic trading and its effect on connectivity infrastructure. We look forward to expanding our relationship with SIAC and growing their role within Yipes FinancialConnect!."

 

Approximately 69 percent of institutional U.S. equity order flow is currently communicated electronically. This number is projected to rise to nearly 80 percent in 2007 and TABB Group estimates that electronically routed buy-side orders will increase from 1.2 billion shares a day in 2004 to more than 3.1 billion shares in 2007. "At a time when milliseconds matter within the global securities ecosystem, fast connectivity has become integral to the investment process today, which is why firms are being forced to rethink the way they develop, deliver and connect to their clients," said Larry Tabb, chief executive officer at TABB Group.

 

Yipes provides Yipes FinancialConnect! members with fast, cost-effective access to critical market information and services from 1 Mbps to 1 Gbps in 1 Mbps increments. The result is a 30 to 70 percent total cost of ownership reduction and the ability for these organizations to handle multiple data feeds over a less expensive infrastructure.

 

About Yipes:
Yipes Enterprise Services, Inc. is the leading global provider of managed, end-to-end Ethernet solutions for enterprise customers. Yipes offers a uniquely scalable suite of networking services that combine the speed, simplicity and cost effectiveness of native Ethernet with Yipes proprietary bandwidth-on-demand functionality. Yipes provides services in and between major metropolitan markets including: Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Denver, Hong Kong, Houston, Los Angeles, London, Miami, New York, Philadelphia, San Diego, San Francisco, San Jose, Seattle, Tokyo and Washington DC. For more information, visit www.yipes.com.

 

About SIAC:
The Securities Industry Automation Corp. ® (SIAC®) (www.siac.com and sfti.siac.com) is the technology subsidiary of the NYSE Groupsm and the American Stock Exchange® (AMEX®), with responsibility for the design, development, implementation and operation of the exchanges' computer systems and communications networks. SIAC® is the company behind the Secure Financial Transaction Infrastructure® (SFTI®) and is responsible for disseminating U.S. market data worldwide. SIAC began its operations on July 17, 1972.

 

SFTI is a data communications network designed for the financial industry that is more resistant to man-made and natural disasters, while speeding recovery after a crisis. This highly reliable infrastructure offers firms access to SIAC and the NYSE Group, Inc., American Stock Exchange®, clearing corporation and market data services it provides. SFTI B2B^sm utilizes the infrastructure behind SFTI to carry order traffic and other data to additional Exchanges, Market Centers & Content Service Providers.

 

Contact:
Don Hunt or Kelly Smallegan-Maas
Lambert, Edwards & Associates
616 233 0500 phone
mail@lambert-edwards.com

John Panzica — GM Financial Services
Yipes Enterprise Services, Inc.
609 240 2779 cell