Industry Timeline
1950s |  1960s |  1970s |  1980s |  1990s |  2000s

Securities Finance, the Financial Markets and Technology:
An Integrated History of Innovation

We view this timeline as one way to illustrate our belief that securities finance activities are an integral part of modern financial markets, and have their root in some of the key financial and technological events of the second half of the 20th century. The three categories highlighted in the timeline - industry, technology and market benchmarks - reflect the concept that the evolution of the financial industry has been increasingly enabled by advances in technology, and the development of both has led to the growth of securities finance.
NOTE: State Street Events, Milestones and Benchmarks are highlighted in blue.
     
1952 -   Key Industry Event
  • Harry Markowitz, the father of modern portfolio theory, publishes his pioneering work in Portfolio Selection: Efficient Diversification of Investments
1958 -   Key Industry Event
  • Welfare and Pension Disclosure Act mandates full disclosure of the operations of any private pension plan
    Technology Milestone
  • First integrated circuit is produced
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1961 -   Market Benchmark
  • Average daily volume on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) exceeds 4 million shares, nearly triple the level immediately following the war
1964 -   Key Industry Event
  • The capital asset pricing model (CAPM) is introduced in an article by William Sharpe in the Journal of Finance
    Technology Milestone
  • The black box stock ticker is replaced by the 900 ticker, offering nearly twice the speed
1966 -   Key Industry Event
  • Fortune Magazine profiles Alfred Winslow Jones, founder of the modern hedge fund
    Technology Milestone
  • Transmission of trade and quote data from the NYSE floor is fully automated
1968 -   Key Industry Events
  • Euroclear founded by Morgan Guaranty Trust (Brussels) to clear international share transactions
  • Approximately 200 hedge funds in U.S., including those formed by George Soros, Michael Steinhardt and Warren Buffett
    Technology Milestone
  • Intel founded — would become world's largest semiconductor company and revolutionize microprocessor industry
    Market Benchmark
  • NYSE establishes Central Certificate Service (CCS) to transfer securities electronically, eliminating their physical handling for settlement purposes
1969 -   Technology Milestone
  • ARPANET, the first internet, is launched by the U.S. military; Unix operating system first developed
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1971 -   Market Benchmark
  • NASDAQ opens as world's first electronic stock market
1973 -   Key Industry Events
  • "The Pricing of Options and Corporate Liabilities" by Fischer Black and Myron Scholes is published in the Journal of Political Economy
  • SWIFT (Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication) founded in Belgium by 239 banks from 15 countries to "automate the telex"
    Market Benchmark
  • Depository Trust Company (now the Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation) assumes the operations of CCS; focuses on custodial services for banks, brokers and other institutions; provides centralized, automated post-trade processing
1974 -   Key Industry Events
  • Passage of Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA) overhauls federal pension law
  • State Street begins providing securities lending services
1975 -   Key Industry Event
  • Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) bans fixed minimum commission rates, a cornerstone of the U.S. securities markets and all other organized exchanges throughout the world
    Technology Milestone
  • Microsoft founded by Bill Gates and Paul Allen
1976 -   Key Industry Events
  • Vanguard index mutual fund launches
  • National Securities Clearing Corporation formed
    Technology Milestone
  • The Apple computer is introduced
    Market Benchmark
  • National Securities Clearing Corporation formed
1978 -   Technology Milestone
  • The Intermarket Trading System is established, linking seven exchanges via computers
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1980 -   Key Industry Events
  • Derivative products (like futures, options and warrants) become more plentiful throughout the decade
  • The 1980s mark the rise of international hedge funds as market players
    Market Benchmark
  • Yearly trading volume on NYSE surpasses 10 billion shares
1981 -   Key Industry Event
  • PTE 81–6 ERISA exemption, "Lending of Securities", permits plans to lend securities, leads to growth in securities lending
    Technology Milestone
  • Mike Bloomberg forms Innovative Market Systems, later Bloomberg L.P.
1982 -   Key Industry Event
  • Drysdale Government Securities collapses, leading to significant collateralization reforms; PTE 82-63 ERISA exemption, "Compensation to Fiduciaries for Securities Lending Services," provides relief from certain ERISA restrictions
    Market Benchmark
  • The NYSE experiences its first 100 million share day
1984 -   Key Industry Event
  • Less than 70 identifiable hedge funds exist in U.S. after losses sustained in 1970s
1985 -   Technology Milestone
  • Microsoft Windows graphical user interface for personal computers launched
1986 -   Key Industry Event
  • "Big Bang" regulatory reforms in U.K. have wide-reaching global impact
1987 -   Market Benchmark
  • On October 19th ("Black Monday") the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) experiences its largest one-day percentage drop in history, 508 points or 22.61 percent. This drop causes volume to surge to an unprecedented 604 million shares
1988 -   Key Industry Event
  • In the U.K., Maxwell Communications' pension funds begin to lend shares to provide collateral for bank loans to Maxwell's private companies
1989 -   Key Industry Event
  • State Street establishes securities lending office in London
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1990 -   Key Industry Events
  • State Street begins using a risk equivalency system to more accurately measure borrower credit limits
  • The Group of Thirty publishes a special report on clearance and settlement systems; Recommendation Eight encourages securities lending and calls for removal of barriers inhibiting its practice
  • State Street establishes securities lending office in Tokyo.
    Market Benchmark
  • World's total capital market of stocks, bonds and cash exceeds $22 trillion, up from $2 trillion in 1969
1991 -   Key Industry Events
  • Death of Maxwell Communications’ Robert Maxwell reveals he had lost £460 million of his employees’ pension fund assets
  • Legislation in U.K. reinstates ability of British investors to lend non–U.K. assets; further regulatory changes permit British unit trusts to lend their securities
  • Hong Kong liberalizes regulations on securities lending
  • State Street establishes securities lending office in Sydney
    Market Benchmark
  • GovPX — a 24–hour, worldwide electronic reporting system — is formed to distribute real time quotes and transaction prices for U.S. Treasury and other government securities
1992 -   Technology Milestone
  • The World Wide Web is launched
    Market Benchmarks
  • Pension funds, educational endowments and charitable foundations own more than 50% of the stock outstanding in the U.S. — over $2 trillion
  • Daily trading of U.S. government bonds exceeds $100 billion; the average daily volume of the NYSE surpasses 200 million shares
1993 -   Key Industry Event
  • State Street separates its securities lending arm from its custody business, viewing it instead as an asset management function. This distinction starts an industry trend
    Technology Milestone
  • Windows NT desktop operating system launches
1994 -   Key Industry Event
  • Increased focus on risk management in securities lending due to Barings collapse in the U.K. and huge investment losses
    Technology Milestone
  • Financial Information Exchange (FIX) protocol committee established
1995 -   Key Industry Event
  • New hedging tools and favorable publicity in early 1990s lead to resurgence of hedge funds
    Market Benchmark
  • The three-day settlement period (T+3) for listed equities is introduced
1996 -   Technology Milestone
  • NYSE launches real-time stock tickers on CNBC and CNNfn. Previously, market data had been delayed 20 minutes
1997 -   Market Benchmark
  • The DJIA plummets 554 points, triggering the NYSE's "circuit breaker" rule for the first time. Trading halts at 3:30 p.m.
1998 -   Key Industry Events
  • Japan Securities Dealers Association (JSDA) legitimizes the lending of equities from pension plans with Handling of Stock Lending Transactions
  • Long Term Capital Management hedge fund collapses
  • Period of economic turmoil in several Asian markets — the "Asian Contagion" — begins
  • State Street establishes securities lending offices in Toronto and Montreal
    Technology Milestone
  • State Street launches SL PerformanceAnalyzer®, the industry's first risk-adjusted performance measurement tool
    Market Benchmark
  • Total value of the bond market is over $10 trillion — up approximately 400 percent since 1980
1999 -   Key Industry Events
  • The Euro is created — one result is the increase of cash collateral lending in the Eurozone.
  • Some estimates place the number of hedge funds at close to 4,000
    Market Benchmark
  • DJIA tops 10,000 for the first time
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2000 -   Key Industry Event
  • The S&P Global 100 Index is launched — a collaboration of the NYSE, Standard & Poor's, the Tokyo Stock Exchange and the Deutsche Borse
    Technology Milestone
  • Financial service providers start to tackle the challenges of straight-through processing (STP). Wall Street survives Y2K
    Market Benchmarks
  • SEC implements plan to convert pricing of equities and options from fractions to decimals
  • DJIA closes at its all-time high - 11,722.98
2001 -   Key Industry Events
  • The Canadian government legalizes lending from mutual funds
  • State Street establishes securities lending office in Hong Kong
    Technology Milestone
  • EquiLend Holdings LLC established; goal is to develop a global platform for the automation and negotiation of securities financing transactions between securities lenders and borrowers. State Street is one of the ten founding firms
    Market Benchmarks
  • On January 4th, volume of trading on NYSE exceeds 2 billion shares for the first time — this record-volume day followed the previous day's 1/2-percentage-point interest rate cut by the Fed Reserve, which lowered the fed funds rate to 6 percent
  • Decimal pricing of stocks implemented, ending the 200+ year-old practice of trading in eighths and sixteenths of a dollar
2002 -   Key Industry Events
  • Single stock futures begin trading in the U.S.
  • Clearstream International (Luxembourg) acquired by Deutsche Börse AG
    Market Benchmarks
  • Over US$1 trillion in portfolio securities on loan in U.S.
  • On July 24 the NYSE handles its largest single volume day - 2.81 billion shares
2003 -   Technology Milestone
  • EquiLend offers its participants daily access to more than $1 trillion in lendable securities and has facilitated more than $400 billion in securities loans since the platform went live in late June 2002
    Market Benchmarks
  • Hedge funds manage more than US$600 billion worldwide, compared to $311 billion in 1998
  • U.S. institutions trade an average of US$ 7.4 billion in equity derivatives, an increase of 23% from 2001
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