From Scott Cutler:

What a difference six months makes! Back in June, who would have thought that the equity markets would have rebounded so strongly and that we would have seen not only record amounts of capital being raised in the follow-on market but also the IPO market having staged an impressive resurgence. After only 15 transactions in the first 6 months in the U.S., the IPO market witnessed a dramatic turnaround, finishing the year with 65 transactions, raising over $27 billion. We are proud that the NYSE listed 36 of these IPOs, raising nearly $19 billion in proceeds. From our perspective, the market was generally open to companies across industry sectors; however, a few sectors saw repeat issuers such as technology, general industrial, consumer services and energy. While the average size of the IPO was somewhat larger than in prior years, it has started to trend down as smaller growth companies are more broadly able to access the market.

The 2010 pipeline seems to be materializing nicely (we have seen 79 new IPO filings since August) and while the IPO market has seen some weakness over the past few weeks, I am confident that there will be broad interest for high quality IPOs next year. In the conversations we have had with buy-side accounts, it appears that there will be increased interest in smaller growth stories in sectors such as technology, consumer and biotech and we also expect to see a host of new issuance activity in clean technology and internet / digital media. Certainly, the market will remain robust in China as its economy continues to see strong growth with companies seeking capital.

At NYSE Euronext, we have continued to fight vigorously on behalf of our clients, including speaking out against increased foreign tax regulation, reduction of SOX burden and exploring ways to stimulate IPO activity with the private equity and venture communities, all of which help contribute to innovation and job creation. While much has been made over the U.S. IPO market structure, we firmly believe that the market fundamentally works and will continue to be the place to facilitate the best growth capital in the world.

Companies large and small continue to choose NYSE Euronext as their listing partner for many reasons including:
- Superior platform for IPO execution and trading support post-IPO;
- Only market with market makers accountable to issuers to provide liquidity; and
- Network among leading companies to drive business growth.

We look forward to welcoming many more companies into the family in 2010 and encourage you to explore joining the world’s premiere network of leading companies.

From Marisa Ricciardi:

Lucasfilm Ltd. and Star Wars enthusiasts joined forces to promote their legendary StarWars brand and product lines, including Hasbro’s (NYSE: HAS) Star Wars action figures and play-sets. Characters from “A Galaxy, Far, Far, Away” landed on the Trading Floor, mesmerizing traders with their cinema-accurate re-creations of beloved Star Wars characters, before ringing The Opening Bell this morning. Now all we need is a visit from Harrison Ford and my year is complete.

To view the FOX Business video, click here.

To view The Huffington Post article, click here.

Back in November we built a great demo comparing RDMA to TCP over 10 Gigabit Ethernet and we showed it on the Intel stand at Super Computing 2009 in Portland, Oregon. During the same show I got the chance to present to conference attendees on the reason why NYSE Euronext strongly supports Remote Direct Memory Access (RDMA) as a way to increase data throughput while reducing transport latency. In these days of high-frequency trading, low latency and high-throughput are the two most critical technology challenges facing all financial services firms — large and small. You can watch a video recording of that presentation below:

What a way to end what a week. New York Stock Exchange regular-session trading volume totaled a record 3,159,670,000 shares today. Volume in Citigroup, Inc. also was a single-issue record today, at 874,367,600 shares. I believe the close as a whole might also have set a record, and I’ll update this if I learn more on that.

All of this extraordinary volume was executed extremely smoothly, particularly when you consider today’s quarterly expirations, the contentration of volume at the close, this week’s news in the financials, and the approaching end-of-month and end-of-year rebalancing of indices and portfolios.

And say what you will about the state of the economy, the financial industry, and the markets these days, but for a bit of perspective: the previous volume record for a regular NYSE session was 2,998,641,000 shares on Sept. 19, 2008, and you remember the state of the financial world that day, yes?

Have a good weekend, my friends.

Earlier today, my colleague Scott Cutler, our head of listings for the Americas (and occasional contributor to Exchanges), spoke with CNBC about whether the recent momentum in initial public offerings has legs for 2010.

From Marisa Ricciardi:

Broad Street was blanketed on Thursday afternoon with NYSE employees and downtown visitors enjoying the sights and sounds of the NYSE 86th Annual Tree Lighting Ceremony.

Guests were treated to live performances by Billy Ray Cyrus, The Manhattan Transfer, Collective Soul, Stryper, Honor Society, David Nail, Joshua Bell, Kate Voegele, Tamela Mann, The Monsignor Donovan Choir and the cast of Broadway’s “Rock of Ages” with Twisted Sister. Special appearances were made by Valerie Smaldone, “Dancing With the Stars” winner Kym Johnson, and the New York Jets Flight Crew.

If that was not enough of a rush, Conagra’s (NYSE:CAG) Hebrew National Hot Dogs and Swiss Miss Hot Chocolate, Capital Grille’s (NYSE:DRI) warm hot apple cider and biscottis and Tiffany’s (NYSE:TIF) blue and white cookies sure did the trick. Santa Claus could not find a naughty one in the bunch.

From Marisa Ricciardi:

AOL (NYSE: AOL) celebrated last Wednesday at the NYSE on the eve of their spin-off from Time Warner with the likes of Harry Connick, Jr., Vogue Editor-in-Chief Anna Wintour and special guest Sean “P. Diddy” Combs. Here are some pictures of the celebration, from Business Insider.

The evening was overflowing with energy as hundreds of guests were welcomed onto the hot pink carpet leading to the Trading Floor surrounded by AOL’s new branding. The festivities culminated the next morning with Chairman and CEO Tim Armstrong joined on the podium by executives ringing the Opening Bell to mark their first day of regular way trading. Welcome back, AOL — we’ve missed you!

I think you know by now, I’m no first adopter. I write for a blog, but my contribution consists of just that: writing. If you asked me how this computer works, I’d tell you it works great, you just plug it into the wall.

A technodork, I may be. But I know one thing: I love my new gadget. Our NYSE Desktop Notices & Alerts Gadget, that is.

This Google gadget brings you important market updates faster and easier than you’re probably getting them now, it’s available to customers and the public, and it’s free.

This little guy sits on your desktop screen as a small icon, bringing you NYSE and NYSE Amex Cash Market Trader Updates as well as NYSE System Status Alerts and Notices in near real time (~15 seconds). You can get alerts even while working in other applications by selecting the gadget option that keeps incoming messages “always on top” of open documents and windows.

When all NYSE and NYSE Amex trading and market data systems are functioning normally, the gadget displays a green “all system go” thumbs up and shows the Dow Jones Industrial Average. If an issue occurs, the DJIA information is replaced with an alert message that remains until you acknowledge it as “read” or until after the close of the trading day. Plus, important Cash Equities Market Operations news updates called Trader Updates appear daily via the gadget, in a very unobtrusive, easy-to-manage manner.

To read more about the NYSE Desktop Notices & Alerts Gadget, or to get the instructions to download it, go to: http://www.nyse.com/nysegooglegadget

For product questions and issues please e-mail: DNAgadget@nyx.com

Before the gadget came along, to get these alerts and updates I relied on e-mail (but I get hundreds of e-mails a day, so I often got the messages belatedly or missed them altogether) and RSS (which always has a lag of minutes or more). In comparison, the gadget brings the information faster, more reliably and in a way that’s easy for me to work.

I don’t like to clutter up my desktop with applications I don’t need or use. And I don’t do a lot of endorsements (although recently I’ve been approached by some plastic surgeons about a break on rhinoplasty if they can use my face for the “before” pictures). But I’m only too happy to say: my little gadget is always on top on my desktop. Worth checking out!

From Scott Cutler: A year ago, all expectations were for a quiet year on the capital raising front. And yet, as we head into the final weeks of 2009, we expect another 8 IPOs bringing the total to nearly 80 newly public companies for the year in the U.S. Over $19 billion has been raised so far just on NYSE Euronext’s US markets with a total of 43 IPOs. Not only have companies on NYSE Euronext’s US markets raised more in dollar proceeds, but, for the first time, we are scheduled to attract more IPO transactions from operating companies than any other US market by year end. And, all of this is on top of the record $200 billion raised in secondaries at the NYSE.

The new issuance market in 2009 was truly global, with the top exchanges being Hong Kong, NYSE, Shanghai, Shenzen, Brazil, and then Nasdaq, with the LSE as a distant 9th in capital raising among world exchanges. Starting with Mead Johnson in February and continuing with a series of technology IPOs in SolarWinds, Digital Globe, Rosetta Stone, then through some brand names such as Hyatt, Dollar General and Dole, and finally, the largest global IPO of the year with Banco Santander Brasil –the NYSE led the US markets. Our biggest differentiators continue to be association with the world’s leading companies, the best platform for IPO execution and post-IPO support, and our unique market model which provides accountability to the issuer. As has been proven time and again, the NYSE’s price discovery process and the ongoing support from the DMMs makes going public on our markets smooth and reliable. Finally, we do a tremendous amount of work supporting the branding of our listed companies. Here is a video from the party we had on the floor last night celebrating AOLs return to the NYSE and debut as a stand-alone company. [attach link] There truly is no comparison to listing on the NYSE.

The question, of course, is whether the momentum for initial capital raising will continue. We think so. There are continuing concerns about costs and potential regulatory burdens for companies considering going public, but there is plenty of appetite for those with solid track records and consistent growth stories. We have seen over 50 new filings since September, so the calendar for the first half of 2010 is expected to be conservatively better than 2009.

Check out this growing list of notable 2009 IPOs and when you are ready to test the markets with your own company, you know where to find us.

(MJN; BSBR; DOLE; DG; H; EM; VSI; STRI; BPI; DGI; RST; SWI; ART; SEM; STWD; AOL)

Here’s a video about AOL — the latest addition to that list — going public:

Watch the latest business video at FOXBusiness.com

From Marisa Ricciardi and Ray Pellecchia: Bringing together entrepreneurs, digital media executives, and journalists who cover the industry, Founders Club New York took this year’s holiday party “public” at the NYSE earlier this week.

NYSE Euronext CEO Duncan Niederauer hosted the event on the evolving NYSE Trading Floor. He was joined by Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Alexis Glick of FOX Business, who moderated a discussion between the two on small business and government regulation. For a clip of part of that conversation, click on the image embedded above.

Here are a few key takeways from the interview:

From Mayor Bloomberg:

• Government must recognize it cannot have it both ways: it cannot expect to have vigorous lending, job creation and investment if it adopts policies that discourage these essential elements of growth.

• Great innovations and advances often come in economic downturns. Although capital is harder to come by in such times, other resources are more plentiful and less expensive, including labor, space and materials. Even such great works as Central Park and the Empire State building were born in such times.

• Entrepreneurs succeed by making investments at the low end of the cycle.

From Duncan:

• Initial public offerings are coming back. This month should be the most active December for IPOs in recent memory.

• Early this year, many of the IPOs that listed on NYSE were the kinds of companies that might have been Founders Club members not long ago: great ideas that became successful businesses and then reached out to the capital markets to continue growing. Such companies include Rosetta Stone, Digital Globe, Solar Wind and Bridgepoint Education.

• More recently, many of our IPOs have hailed from Brazil and the tech sector, as well as major names such as Dole, Hyatt and Dollar General.

For a photo slide show of the event, click here.