Mr. Martocchio will report directly to Mark Monahan, Ballista's CEO, and will start on March 22nd.

Prior to his appointment at Ballista, Mr. Martocchio was Co-Head of Sales for the Global Equity Division at the Bear Stearns Companies, Inc. In this capacity, Mr. Martocchio worked on the integration and coordination of all client sales activities across the domestic and international cash equity, equity derivatives, portfolio trading, risk arbitrage, prime brokerage, and broker dealer/investment advisor services product areas. Also during Mr. Martocchio's 14-year tenure at Bear Stearns, he served as the Global Head of Sales for Structured Equity Products, helping to found the group. Furthermore, as a Principal of Morgan Stanley & Co., Inc.'s Synthetic Equity Group, Mr. Martocchio was responsible for designing and marketing of synthetic equity products in North America.

"Don has a great track record for growing equity derivatives businesses," said Mark Monahan, Ballista's CEO. "We are very pleased to have Don leading our commercial efforts and continuing our impressive expansion."

An anonymous, automated and rules-based options trading platform, the Ballista ATS offers traders standardization of order-entry for complex order types, user-defined trading filters to manage workflow, and advanced negotiation capability. On June 9 of 2009, Ballista Securities closed a funding round with strategic investors: International Securities Exchange, Knight Capital Group, Morgan Stanley and Susquehanna Growth Equity, LLP. Ballista, which received its FINRA membership in August 2008, began live trading on Ballista ATS on October 28, 2008.