CME Group, the world's leading and most diverse derivatives marketplace, today announced that is has been selected by IDG's Computerworld as a 2010 Best Places to Work in IT honoree for the sixth consecutive year in recognition of the company's commitment to challenging its IT team while providing great benefits and compensation. This honor is part of the weekly IT publication's 17th annual Best Places to Work in IT survey, which was published in the June 21 issue and online at www.computerworld.com. Once again, CME Group is the only financial exchange operator to receive this honor.
Since 1994, Computerworld's annual "Best Places to Work in IT" feature has ranked the top 100 work environments for technology professionals, based on a comprehensive questionnaire regarding company offerings in categories such as benefits, diversity, career development, training and retention.
"Receiving this award is a great acknowledgement of our industry leading technology capabilities and the critical role our technology team plays in helping to support our core business and drive new growth initiatives," said CME Group CEO Craig Donohue. "We look forward to continuing to apply our technology expertise to bring innovative trading solutions to market and expand our global distribution."
"Our clients around the world continue to benefit from our strong investment in technology, and we want to thank our employees for their continued focus on improving system functionality and customer connectivity," said CME Group President Phupinder Gill. "We are extremely proud of the great work they have done to advance our reputation as a leading technology company."
Some of the factors that contributed to CME Group's recognition by Computerworld included the following:
- Electronic trading represents approximately 83 percent of CME Group's total volume to date in 2010, versus only 15 percent in 2000. In that same timeframe, average daily total volume has grown more than thirteen-fold from 917,000 to 12.7 million contracts traded;
- CME is the first financial exchange in the world to operate virtually 24 hours every trading day, which means every aspect of the exchange is driven or supported by technology; and,
- CME Globex, which is currently approved to operate in 150 countries and foreign territories, offers global access to the broadest array of futures and options products across all major asset classes - a full range of interest rate, equity index, foreign exchange, energy, agricultural commodities, metals, weather and real estate products. CME Group's technology team is charged with continuously enhancing the system's speed, reliability and scalability to support ongoing growth and customer demand. The CME Globex platform is one of the most efficient and robust electronic trading platforms available today, capable of executing customer trades in under 7 milliseconds, with some markets trading in 2.5 milliseconds.
"To be among the Best Places to Work in IT, it's not enough just to seek out and hire the most talented IT people, offer them competitive pay and provide great benefits," said Scot Finnie, editor in chief of Computerworld. "The organizations that made this year's Best Places to Work list sustain a dynamic work environment in which IT professionals keep their hands on the latest technologies and work on projects that are business critical."