Ownership PrivateLocation New York, NYFounded 1997CEO Omar AmanatEmployees 350Sector Financial servicesWeb site www.tradescape.com

THE HERRING TAKETradescape.com is a fast-growing technology company with good friends in high places. It's also a potential buyout target in a consolidating industry.

MARKET Serves as a hub between high-volume traders and the exchanges, electronic communication networks (ECNs), and market makers. Provides customers with a proprietary system called Smart Order Routing Technology (SORT) and processes 7 percent of the Nasdaq's daily volume, or more than 150,000 trades daily. Goldman Sachs's (NYSE: GS) buyout of Spear, Leeds, and Kellogg in October makes companies involved with executing market trades hot properties.

STRATEGY Aims to leverage heavy-duty partnerships and customer relationships with Morgan Stanley Dean Witter (NYSE: MWD), Salomon Smith Barney, Softbank Japan (Tokyo: 9984), and Warburg Pincus to extend its SORT platform throughout Wall Street. Needs to make sure its MarketXT ECN continues to increase its liquidity levels. One key competitor is Charles Schwab (NYSE: SCH), which acquired the Tradescape.com clone CyBerCorp last year.

MANAGEMENT Chairman Michael Sanderson was formerly president of Reuters's Instinet and CEO of MarketXT, an extended-hours trading platform acquired by Tradescape.com for $100 million in 2000. CEO founded the company and is on the board of governors of the Electronic Trade Association.

FINANCIALS Profitable on an operating basis during 2000 (at some point during the year, its operating margin came above zero). On track to pull in $250 million in sales in 2001, up from $140 million in 2000. Absorbed MarketXT's $25 million investment from Warburg Pincus in October 1999 and raised $40 million from Softbank Japan over a 13-month period in 1999 and 2000.

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