FLASH FRIDAY is a weekly content series that focuses on the past, supply, and long-term industry and generation in the capital markets. FLASH FRIDAY is sponsored through Instinet, a Nomura company.
The WBR Equity Leaders Summit held in Miami this week, and one of the topics of the occasion was how trading platforms are innovating to supply liquidity. As usual, some of the older panelists reminisced about the days when they were given liquidity by picking up the phone and calling brokers.
The pinnacle of high-touch trading arguably would have been reached when UBS built trading ground a few decades ago. Not just any commercial terrain: a commercial terrain for a record number of human investors and landlines. Like, as big as a soccer field.
As the Kansas City Chiefs and San Francisco 49ers prepare to meet in Super Bowl LVIII next Sunday, what better time to revisit the best-known connection ever made between the exchange and the interrogation?
The former UBS mall in Stamford, Connecticut, was built in the 1990s. It fell on hard times during the global currency crisis of 2008-2009 and the bank sold the assets in 2017. In the age of e-commerce, it’s safe to say that the land’s access to the Guinness Book of World Records will never be questioned.
“There are 1,400 investors sitting next to 5,000 computers,” Guinness reported in 2002. The operating room is almost the length of the flight deck of the USS John F. Kennedy, the world’s largest aircraft carrier, or 20. 5 basketball courts or 44 individual tennis courts.
But, of course, the interchange ground has been described as being the length of a football field, or more precisely, the length of two football fields. That’s a lot more distance than Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes can cover on a deep pass, if Tyreek Hill were still on the team.
To illustrate the ubiquity of this descriptor, even today, a Google search for “trading field football field” (four generic words) yields articles about the UBS trading field as the top two results, and 11 of the top 14.
The history of UBS’s commercial terrain is well known. But what does it look like today?
Of course, a space as large as that probably wouldn’t be a community flower shop, coffee shop, or bistro. In the event of a change in ownership, it could simply be a laser tag arena, a curler derby arena, an ice rink or a movie set. .
The end result is as fun as any of them: 677 Washington Boulevard in Stamford, Connecticut, is now an office tower.
“A former headquarters of a foreign bank with the world’s largest commercial land has undergone a fundamental transformation,” the tower’s website says. “Originally, this 12-acre complex opened in 1998 to serve as the North American headquarters of UBS International Bank. After a primary repositioning, tenants can now take advantage of its world-class infrastructure, adding ceiling heights of more than thirteen feet and floor-to-ceiling windows with Long Island Sound perspectives.
The building houses a lobby bar and café, convention spaces and lounges, a convention center, a yoga studio, a gym, a dining room and a terrace, among other amenities.
Everything turns out beautiful and modern, very much in 2024. And if walls could talk, there would be some clever stories of delicate jobs that went well or badly.