Belzberg Deploys End-to-End Securities Trading System for Worldco Financial Services

Business Wire, May 15, 2000

Business Editors

NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--May 15, 2000

Belzberg Financial Markets & News International Inc. (CDN:BELZ.), a leading supplier of end-to-end global trading solutions, intelligent order routing systems and e-commerce gateways, has reached an agreement with Worldco Financial Services, a New York-based professional trading firm, to add its high-volume, end-to-end securities trading system to Worldco's menu of routing and execution systems to trade on both the NYSE and Nasdaq equity markets from locations across the country and internationally over a nationwide proprietary Intranet.

Under the agreement, Worldco will license Belzberg's end-to-end electronic trading system to provide its traders and customers with a customized front-end trading application to route trades electronically to the NYSE, Nasdaq market makers, ECNs and ATS'. The Belzberg system, which interfaces to Worldco's proprietary compliance, risk management and back-office systems, is currently operating on Worldco desktops, and is expected to be supporting in excess of 1000 Worldco traders and customers by year-end.

"Worldco is committed to providing traders and customers with the most current, advanced trading technology, and Belzberg is a welcomed addition to our existing menu of services," John Miller, CEO of Worldco, said. "The financial benefits to our traders resulting from this kind of efficiency could be enormous," he added.

"We are very pleased that Worldco has selected Belzberg as a strategic vendor to support its international trading business," Sid Belzberg, CEO of Belzberg Financial, said. "This is deal represents a significant milestone for Belzberg in its commitment to supply robust, reliable trading solutions on a very large scale and on an international basis."

Worldco's Trading System uses the Belzberg Trading Gateway, a scalable, high-speed, high-volume platform that intelligently routes trades received over the Internet and through wireless hand-held devices to the appropriate exchange, ECN, ATS or market maker for execution. The platform's patented protocol translation capability makes trading transparent to the trader and to the exchange where the trades are sent. In this way the Gateway functions as a technological bridge that facilitates electronic trading in today's environment of diverse technological infrastructures and standards.

The Belzberg Trading Gateway currently connects to all U.S. and Canadian exchanges including the NYSE, AMEX, numerous Nasdaq market makers, ECNs and alternative trading systems. Connectivity to exchanges around the world, including Europe, Asia and Australia will be available later this year. The Belzberg Trading Gateway is compliant will standard exchange protocols such as the Financial Information Exchange (FIX) protocol, which is currently the industry standard; Common Message Switch Interface Protocol (CMS), used by the American and New York Stock Exchanges; STAMP, used by the Toronto and CDNX Exchanges; and SWIFT protocol, universally used by the Banking industry. Many other protocols are currently being added.

The Belzberg Trading Gateway has proved to be a reliable solution for the financial industry having won numerous customers including BT Brokerage, Merrill Lynch, State Street Brokerage, CIBC World Markets, TD Waterhouse, HSBC and others.

About Worldco

Worldco, LLC, (http://www.worldco.com) headquartered at 110 Wall Street, New York, NY, is a privately held, self-clearing NASD member broker-dealer. Utilizing fully integrated proprietary and third party technology, Worldco provides professional proprietary traders, institutional money managers, hedge funds and high net-worth individuals with electronic trade routing and execution.

About Belzberg Financial

Belzberg Financial Markets & News International Inc. (http://www.belzberg.com), with offices in New York, Chicago and Toronto, has been providing trading systems, order management systems, and protocol translation gateways to major Canadian and US financial institutions since 1993.

Belzberg invented the world's first Internet message translation gateway for the Financial Industry, and brought it to market in 1996. Belzberg is currently extending its high-speed Internet gateway to include delivery of secure and personalized electronic information services, transactions and payments on a broad range of mass-market wired and wireless Internet-enabled devices including personal digital assistants, digital mobile phones, and paging devices.

This press release may contain forward-looking information, including statements regarding strategic direction. These comments constitute forward-looking statements (within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995) which involve significant risks and uncertainties. Actual results may differ materially from the information discussed in these forward-looking statements. Among the factors that could cause actual results, performance or achievement to differ materially from those described or implied in the forward-looking statements are general economic conditions, competition, potential technology changes, changes in or the lack of anticipated changes in the regulatory environment in various countries, the ability to secure partnership or joint-venture relationships with other entities, the ability to raise additional capital to finance expansion, and the risks inherent in new product and service introductions and the entry into new geographic markets.