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CHAPTER FOUR | MITIGATING RISK, SEIZING OPPORTUNITY
similar happen in the future. The Brooklyn site was selected due to its proximity and the ability to move employees from one location to the other as needed. The terrorists’ goals of imploding the World Trade Center—a global icon for Western capitalism—would be met within a decade, and the Brooklyn site would again play an important role. Mitigating risks was deeply ingrained in DTC and practiced so that everyone had “muscle memory,” said Larry Thompson, DTCC’s vice chairman, managing director and general counsel until 2018. “We would have these various exercises that we would do during normal times. ‘What are you going to do? How are you going to contact people? What is your game plan?’ We all had our agendas laid out in front of us, and I think that muscle memory helped us tremendously, because everybody knew what they needed to do.”
Change at the Top
In 1994, when CEO William Dentzer reached the company’s mandatory retirement age of 65, DTC would see its first CEO transition in its 20-plus-year history. The Board of Directors created a search committee that landed upon his successor: Bill Jaenike. Jaenike had been named president in 1991; Dentzer saw him as a “natural choice for the job.”
In the aftermath of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, DTC opened an office in Brooklyn as a backup site. (Photo by Dennis Fraevich courtesy of Flickr.)
1998 DTC participants deliver $77 trillion in securities through DTC’s book-entry system. Securities under custody reach $18.7 trillion.
1999 DTC processes $37 trillion in broker-to-broker equity and bond trades. It processes 250 million institutional trade confirmations.
1999 JANUARY Jill Considine is named chairman and CEO of DTC. She had been on the DTC Board of Directors for six years.
1999 MARCH
DTC and NSCC announce plans to merge. The two organizations had worked closely together throughout the decade, leading the industry in the move from T+5 to T+3 and instituting same-day funds settlement.
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