NYSE Names Former Congressman to Panel

The New York Stock Exchange on Wednesday named former Rep. John LaFalce (D-N.Y.) and union executive Ed Malloy to a board advisory committee that works to protect the interests of individual investors.

LaFalce served in the House of Representatives from 1974 to 2002 and was a member of the Financial Services Committee. Malloy is president of the Building and Construction Trades Council of Greater New York.

The NYSE has been criticized for failing to have board members who directly represent public investors.

The exchange will send Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman William H. Donaldson a report today on efforts to improve its corporate governance.

The individual investors committee, one of 11 advising the NYSE board on policymaking, is headed by Kurt Stocker, chairman of Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism.

Its mission is to help “enhance communications between individual shareholders and the NYSE board,” the exchange said.

Last month, Citigroup Inc. Chairman Sanford Weill withdrew as a nominee for a non-industry director’s spot on the NYSE’s 27-person board after New York Atty. Gen. Eliot Spitzer called his appointment to represent the public “an outrage.”

Citigroup agreed to pay $400 million, more than any other brokerage, in the $1.4-billion Wall Street research settlement announced this month.

Twelve of the NYSE’s 27 members represent floor brokers, traders and investment banks in the securities industry and 12 are non-industry directors who traditionally are chief executives of companies whose shares are listed on the exchange or are members of law firms or private equity firms that work with the securities industry.

The three remaining directors are NYSE Chairman and CEO Richard Grasso and NYSE co-Presidents Catherine Kinney and Robert Britz.