E*TRADE is an investment brokerage and electronic trading platform that operates as a subsidary of Morgan Stanley.

History

In 1982, physicist William A. Porter and Bernard A. Newcomb founded TradePlus in Palo Alto, California, with $15,000 in capital. In 1983, it launched its first trade via a Compuserve network. In 1992, Porter and Newcomb founded E-Trade and made electronic trading available to individual investors. On August 16, 1996, the company became a public company via an initial public offering. The company figured prominently in the dot-com boom, as both a way to speculate in internet stocks and an internet stock itself. In October 2020, the company was acquired by Morgan Stanley.

Management history

In November 2007, Mitch Caplan resigned as CEO and Citadel LLC received a seat on the board of directors of the company after Citadel invested $2.5 billion in the company to bolster its finances after it suffered losses due to the bursting of the 2000s United States housing bubble. In March 2008, E-Trade named Donald Layton, formerly JPMorgan Chase vice chairman, its new CEO. Layton had joined E-Trade's board of directors in November 2007, at the same time as the Citadel LLC deal. In December 2009, Robert Druskin, a former chief operating officer of Citigroup, was named interim CEO and chairman. On March 22, 2010, Steven Freiberg was named CEO. Freiberg was the former co-CEO of Citigroup's global consumer group and the former head of its credit card unit. On January 17, 2013, Paul T. Idzik was appointed CEO. Idzik had previously been group chief executive of DTZ and also served ten years at Barclays bank. In September 2016, Karl A. Roessner, E-Trade's general counsel since 2009, was appointed CEO. On August 14, 2019, Michael Pizzi was appointed CEO.

Acquisitions and divestitures