Two Senior Executives From Instinet are Leading and Developing TRADESCAPE.com Institutional Product Offering.

Business Editors

NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Sept. 11, 2000

Leader in Direct-Access Trading Technology

Plans Fourth Quarter Institutional Product Launch

TRADESCAPE.com(TM), Inc. (TRADESCAPE.com), a leader in direct-access trading technology, announced today that John M. Palazzo and Scott M. Graczyk, both formerly of Reuters' Instinet Corporation, have joined Tradescape Institutional, a division of TRADESCAPE.com's wholly-owned electronic communications network (ECN), MarketXT(TM), Inc., as co-presidents. Mr. Palazzo and Mr. Graczyk will be responsible for leading an institutional product offering, currently scheduled for launch in the fourth quarter of 2000.

These appointments follow the additions of Michael P. Molnar, president of TRADESCAPE.com (and former head of global retail sales and trading at Salomon Smith Barney), and Michael O. Sanderson, chairman of TRADESCAPE.com and chairman and CEO of MarketXT, and former CEO of Instinet.

"Across the board, the level of talent and experience that we've been able to attract to TRADESCAPE.com is a tremendous endorsement of our technology, business model, and ability to respond to the needs of professional and institutional traders," said Omar Amanat, chief executive officer of TRADESCAPE.com. "With our advanced technology, our commitment to market-neutrality, and people like Mike Molnar, Mike Sanderson and now John and Scott, we have all the necessary elements in place for a comprehensive, landscape-altering institutional offering."

Mr. Palazzo and Mr. Graczyk, both 38, join the company from Instinet Corporation, a division of Reuters, where they were co-heads of global sales and account management. With over a combined 20 years of experience serving the institutional marketplace, they will build and market an institutional product that integrates the technology, neutrality, and service necessary to take advantage of today's fragmented electronic marketplace.

Aimed at buy- and sell-side institutions, TRADESCAPE.com's institutional product will combine three critical elements:

-- Technology that allows customers to take advantage of market fragmentation.
A JAVA(TM) based front-end interface will integrate advanced trading and
decision support tools with access to all major sources of liquidity, including
MarketXT. Intelligent order routing will allow traders to execute orders based
on their needs for time, price, and liquidity.

-- Neutrality that seeks best execution. The pure agency execution desk will
not engage in proprietary trading and will afford customers complete anonymity.
Institutions will be able to outsource trading and labor with confidence in
their performance.

-- Experience that ensures that customer needs are addressed. In order to
ensure that TRADESCAPE.com helps institutional and professional traders stay
ahead of the rapidly changing structure of the capital markets, the firm has
assembled a team with the experience and vision to build the next generation of
agency brokerage.

"This is disruptive technology combined with best-practices service," said Mr. Amanat. "With the very structure of the capital markets shifting away from concentrated pools of liquidity and resources to a fragmented, highly competitive network, we will not only help institutions manage that change, but use it to their advantage. Wall Street will never look the same again."

"Consider what institutional traders face today - while volume overall is up, individual order size is down, and extended-hours trading has complicated the clearing and settlement process," said Mr. Graczyk. "As a result, institutions have a pressing need for more flexible and intelligent trading systems. Our technology automates the investment cycle, enabling straight-through processing of all sized orders. The institutional group combines this technology with world-class service and neutrality to give buy- and sell-side institutions the tools they need to increase assets under management, meet customer needs and process more business."

"Ironically, one of the results of automation in trading has been a huge increase in complaints about the lack of full-service support. The institutional product can deliver high quality service because our people know the industry inside and out," said Mr. Palazzo. "In the long term, world-class service by market neutral providers will be the industry standard for direct-access technology. Tradescape has already adopted that standard, which will give buy- and sell-side institutions the confidence to depend on our technology and outsource labor to our agency execution desk."

About Mr. Palazzo

John Palazzo joins Tradescape Institutional from Instinet Corporation, where he was most recently co-head of global sales and account management. He has extensive knowledge of the electronic trading environment with over 15 years experience in equity markets. Mr. Palazzo co-managed the Instinet team responsible for more than 5,000 accounts in 40 equity markets across Europe, Asia and the Americas. Before joining Instinet, Mr. Palazzo was a proprietary Options Market Maker on the American Stock Exchange, where he traded equity and equity index options. Mr. Palazzo received a Bachelor of Science from Johns Hopkins University.

About Mr. Graczyk

Prior to joining Tradescape Institutional, Scott Graczyk was co-head of global sales and account management at Instinet Corporation. He co-managed more than 5,000 accounts in 40 equity markets across Europe, Asia and the Americas. As director of U.S. equity, based in London, he managed all US dollar denominated international business. Mr. Graczyk was also responsible for opening new regions, including Australia, Israel, Scandinavia, Eastern Europe, the Middle East and Latin America. Mr. Graczyk was previously a financial consultant at Shearson Lehman Brothers, Tucker Anthony and Merrill Lynch. Mr. Graczyk received a Bachelor of Science from Providence College.

About TRADESCAPE.com

TRADESCAPE.com, Inc. seamlessly connects and empowers securities buyers and sellers in today's fragmented electronic marketplace through its ownership of several financial services companies. TRADESCAPE.com recognizes that traders - from the active online investor at home to the trading desks at the largest financial institutions in the world - all have the same common needs: access to liquidity, low-cost trades, and high-speed order execution. The TRADESCAPE.com companies have taken "a revolutionary step in e-brokerage services," becoming the first providers to offer an end-to-end solution through:

-- An advanced high-speed, direct-access trading platform; -- Access to the major sources of liquidity through an Electronic

Communications Portal(TM) (ECP(TM)); -- Smart Order Routing Technology(TM) (SORT(TM)) that optimizes the

customer's ability to execute trades; and -- A wholly-owned ECN.

Headquartered in New York City, TRADESCAPE.com owns the broker-dealers TRADESCAPE.com Securities(TM), L.L.C. and Momentum Securities(TM), L.L.C., both members of NASD and SIPC. TRADESCAPE.com also owns MarketXT, Inc., an ECN.

TRADESCAPE.com's broker-dealers are share and volume leaders among direct-access e-brokers in the United States. Through its wholly-owned broker-dealers and third-party licensing arrangements, an average 150,000 trades per day were executed in the second quarter 2000 on TRADESCAPE.com trading platforms.

TRADESCAPE.com is backed by investment partners who are leaders in technology and financial services, including SOFTBANK, Morgan Stanley Dean Witter, and Salomon Smith Barney. The largest investor in TRADESCAPE.com is SOFTBANK, through its SOFTBANK Finance subsidiary. SOFTBANK, the Japanese Internet pioneer, also has investments in Yahoo, Inc. (NASDAQ: YHOO) and E*Trade Group (NASDAQ: EGRP). For more information, visit the TRADESCAPE.com Web site at http://www.tradescape.com.