The New York Stock Exchange has named its first female president in 226 years of operations.
The trading bourse's owner, Intercontinental Exchange Inc., named New York Stock Exchange COO Stacey Cunningham as the next president of the exchange, effective May 25. Cunningham will succeed Tom Farley, who is joining a special-purpose acquisition company backed by Daniel Loeb's hedge fund, Third Point LLC, according to The Wall Street Journal.
The announcement breaks new ground in the exchange business as women will head up two of the largest American stock exchanges. Nasdaq President and CEO Adena Friedman took over in her current position at the beginning of 2017.
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Cunningham will take over at the Big Board's helm 24 years after first working on the New York Stock Exchange's trading floor as a summer intern. After stops at Banc of America Securities LLC and Nasdaq Inc., Cunningham joined the New York Stock Exchange's management team in 2012 as vice president of sales and relationship management. Since 2015, she has served as the exchange's COO, a role that New York Stock Exchange Global Head of Listings John Tuttle will take over.
"[The floor is] home," Cunningham said May 22 during an interview on CNBC. "It's a full-circle story for me."
Located just blocks from the "Fearless Girl" statue in Manhattan, the New York Stock Exchange will have its first female president 51 years after Muriel Siebert was elected to the exchange. A pioneer in the financial community, Siebert was the first woman elected to the exchange after facing resistance throughout her career in the financial industry, according to The New York Times'
In 2002, the New York Stock Exchange named Catherine Kinney co-president of the exchange, the first time a woman was named to the position. Cunningham will be the first woman to exclusively lead the exchange as president.
"What a weird time, to have two female presidents of the exchanges," Kirsten Wegner, CEO of high-frequency trading advocacy group Modern Markets Initiative, said in an interview. "I'm of course doing somersaults that there's another woman."
The leadership shake-up was applauded by executives at a number of the exchange's competitors.
Nasdaq Stock Exchange President Nelson Griggs tweeted that he is "looking forward to competing against [Cunningham], but also working with her to improve the markets for public companies."
"Stacey is a fierce competitor, an absolute professional and a profoundly well-qualified executive," Cboe Global Markets Inc. President and COO Chris Concannon, who worked with Cunningham at Nasdaq, said in a statement. "I am delighted for her as she steps into this role."
Cunningham is poised to take control of the New York Stock Exchange at a time when the exchange faces pressure from its chief rivals, regulators and other market participants.
With 12 national securities exchanges in the U.S., developing a distinct model in the "cut-throat business" of U.S. equities has become a mounting task for exchange operators, Georgetown University finance professor Jim Angel said in an interview. Finding a distinction becomes even more difficult when factoring in the more than 30 private trading venues known as dark pools, which have snatched away a sizable portion of trading volume from exchanges, including those owned by Intercontinental Exchange, or ICE.
Exchanges, as a result, have had to find alternative revenue sources and unique market structures to draw in institutional and retail order flow.
From speed bumps to market data, ICE has rolled out a handful of different revenue models across its four equity exchanges. The company will soon have a fifth exchange under its belt, as it agreed to acquire Chicago Stock Exchange Inc. for a reported $70 million in April.
While Cunningham's promotion marks a new era for the New York Stock Exchange, the company's trajectory looks to remain much the same.
"There's a ton of scrutiny on the exchanges," Modern Markets Initiative's Wegner said. "This is a time where she'll have to show her strength as a consensus builder and hopefully try to promote policies that will bring more trading onto the exchanges."

