Nasdaq Update

Nasdaq recently began placing its relationship managers in the field to keep them geographically closer to the listed companies they serve.  For example, Southern California (from San Diego to Santa Barbara) is now covered by two Nasdaq relationship managers who reside in the region.
 
Listed companies should maintain proactive relationships with their relationship managers as these folks can trouble shoot any issue from compliance to listing standards to bell-ringing ceremonies to renting out the Nasdaq MarketSite in New York City for your next analyst day.
 
We were reminded of a couple of interesting tid-bits when Nasdaq visited our offices recently:
 

• Nasdaq’s 2008 Core Services for listed companies (which include free webcasts, a dynamic annual report and Board tools, among others) are valued at $25,000.
• Participation in bell-ringing ceremonies, at the open and close, are market cap driven.  In general, a listed company must have a market cap of $500 million to open the market and $250 million to close the market.
• Nasdaq’s European investor conference is open to companies with market caps of at least $1 billion.
• Pre notification to Nasdaq for all press releases is now handled via an electronic disclosure form at https://www.nasdaq.net/ED/IssuerEntry.aspx.
• Each listed company has a dedicated surveillance account manager called a market intelligence director (MID).  Your MID can provide you with information about large block trades or significant price swings in your stock.  You can work with your market intelligence director to initiate calls when your stock price moves by a pre-determined percentage or when a block of a pre-determined amount of shares changes hands.  You can also call your market intelligence director whenever you need more clarity on how and why your stock is moving.

 
Log on to your company’s Nasdaq home page here for more information.

— Laurie Berman, Senior Vice President, lberman@pondel.com