Sharon Bowen becomes first Black woman to chair NYSE board

AFP | Sharon Bowen was named as chair of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE), its parent company announced, becoming the first Black woman to hold the role at the Wall Street fixture.

Bowen, who is already a member of the boards of the Intercontinental Exchange (ICE) and the NYSE, served from 2014 to 2017 as a commissioner at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission overseeing futures markets.

In 2010, then US president Barack Obama named her to a vice chair of the body regulating US broker-dealers, the Securities Investor Protection Corporation.

Bowen also worked for 3 decades as a partner and associate in law firms, specializing in business law.

With 2,400 listed companies and a combined capitalization of US$36 trillion, the NYSE, located in New York’s Lower Manhattan business district, bills itself as the world’s largest stock exchange.

In 2013, ICE acquired the NYSE Euronext Group, which was created by the merger of the American and European stock exchanges, for US$8.2 billion.