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When you first visit Richard Kilsby at his office there is a surprise in store. He is the chief executive of Tradepoint, the London-based for-profit electronic exchange saved from extinction in May by a consortium led by agency broker Instinet and also including investment banks, an asset manager and a US electronic commission network (ECN) called Archipelago which itself has since applied to become an exchange in the US.
What provokes the surprise is preconceived ideas of what an exchange should look like: large buildings in the centre of financial districts proudly showing off their history. In the executive dining room of the New York Stock Exchange, for example, hang the portraits of past chairmen, and in the corner stands a magnificent Faberge egg donated to the exchange by Tsar Nicholas II at the start of the century.
That is not Tradepoint's style. Its office is in London's Soho, better known for opera, Chinese restaurants and more recently for being one of London's gay meccas. It is only one of several businesses in the building, and the walls are adorned with posters of pop art by Ray Lichtenstein.