Patrick Arbor was one of the longest serving chairmen of the Chicago Board of Trade and a prominent figure in the futures industry for many years. Arbor, a Chicagonative who began his career as a math teacher, joined the exchange in 1965 and spent many years on its floor as an independent trader. His role in the leadership of the CBOT began in 1982, when he was first elected to the board of directors. He served as vice chairman from 1986 to 1988 and as chairman from 1993 to 1999. Under his leadership, the groundwork for the exchange’s transformation from open outcry to electronic trading was laid. He was instrumental in getting the floor to adopt handheld order routing technology. It was also under his leadership that the CBOT formed a partnership withEurex to provide an electronic trading platform for Treasury futures, a decisive change of course in the exchange’s history.
