IT major Cognizant Technology Solutions Corporation will add yet another feather to its crowded cap by ringing the NASDAQ opening bell from its Chennai complex on March 5 at 9:30 a.m. (Eastern Standard Time).
In a press statement, Cognizant and NASDAQ said they would co-host two celebrations – one in Chennai at Cognizant’s techno-complex and another in New York City at NASDAQ’s MarketSite, 4 Times Square. The market opening will be broadcast live.
The company’s CEO Francisco D’ Souza said, ‘Cognizant is honoured to open the NASDAQ market from India, commemorating our rapid growth as a global services firm since our initial public offering nearly nine years ago and India’s emergence as a global leader in the IT and BPO services industries.
NASDAQ is recognized as the pre-eminent global electronic stock exchange with the highest financial and corporate governance standards in the world, and we are pleased to be ranked among the world’s leading companies in the Nasdaq-100 Index,’ he said.
Reacting to this, Charlotte Crosswell, the head of the US techno-stock exchange said: “NASDAQ is delighted to be opening the market with Cognizant, the first offshore IT services company to list on our market.Since its listing in 1998, Cognizant became the first offshore IT consulting company to join the NASDAQ-100 Index and has reached impressive milestones. We are delighted to be back in India to remotely open the market, and it is an honour to hold the ceremony in Chennai at one of Cognizant’s state-of-the-art facilities.”
Cognizant, listed on NASDAQ since June 1998, was also added to the S and P 500 index becoming the first global offshore IT major to achieve this distinction. The company surpassed 1.4 billion dollars in annual revenue in 2006.
The NASDAQ Remote Opening Bell ceremony is a re-creation of the daily Opening Bell that takes place in the NASDAQ studio.On an average, NASDAQ processes approximately 20,000 stock market transactions per second and nearly 12 million trades per day.
