Two Decades of SIFMA: A Century-Long Legacy of Industry Collaboration

Opening Remarks for SIFMA's 2026 Annual Meeting

Good morning. I now declare SIFMA's formal 2026 annual business meeting open, and it is my great pleasure to welcome you here today.

This year's annual meeting carries special significance, as SIFMA marks its 20th anniversary.

SIFMA was formed on November 1, 2006, bringing together the Securities Industry Association and The Bond Market Association. While we are marking 20 years as SIFMA, our organizational roots extend much further - dating back to 1912 with the founding of the Investment Bankers Association and more than a century of bringing the industry together to support strong, effective, and resilient capital markets.

Over the past century, and not the least of which the past two decades, our industry has seen dramatic change and weathered significant challenges, all the while exhibiting growth, innovation and resiliency to serve the national and global economies.

From the Buttonwood Agreement in 1792 that led to the creation of the New York Stock Exchange, the Federal Reserve Act, the Great Depression and the establishment of the Securities and Exchange Commission, Glass-Steagall, the paper crisis, the advent of discount brokerage, the creation of the high-yield bond market and the electronification of equity markets, T+5 to T+3 to T+2 to T+1, the Great Financial Crisis, Superstorm Sandy, and COVID-19, our industry has come together through thick and thin to ensure our markets function to serve our clients and grow the economy.

As we look toward 24/7 or, as we say at SIFMA 23/5, digitization and tokenization, private markets, artificial intelligence and so many other evolutionary trends that will come, SIFMA and its members are proud to be a critical coordinating body facilitating those industry efforts. Thank you for being here to celebrate this milestone on behalf of our industry. During the breaks today, take a moment to visit the virtual timeline of the industry and SIFMA's role out in the registration area, or online at sifma.org/timeline. I hope you will find it as interesting and inspiring to be part of this great industry as I do.

Before we begin today, I would like to thank the many speakers and panelists for their participation in this year's meeting. And I would like to thank our sponsors for their support.

SIFMA, its members and the industry are fortunate to have tremendously talented and dedicated leadership. The SIFMA Board Executive Committee ensures that our directors represent all the major constituencies of SIFMA members and has provided a proxy for voting. The corporate secretary has received the required number of votes in accordance with the by-laws, and the members have elected the 2026- 2027 class of board directors. Additionally, the Board of Directors has elected the 2026-2027 officers and on behalf of our members, I'd like to congratulate them on their new roles:

Chair: David Lefkowitz, JPMorganChase

Chair-elect: Lawrence Martinez, D.A. Davidson Companies

Vice Chair: Tom Wipf, UBS

Chair Emeritus: Ronald Kruszewski, Stifel

Treasurer: Lisa Kidd Hunt, Charles Schwab

I'd also like to recognize our newly elected Board members and our re-elected Board members. And finally, I would like to thank all of our Board members for their contributions to SIFMA over the past year, particularly those completing their service.

I would especially like to recognize our 2025-2026 chair, Ron Kruszewski, Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer of Stifel for his outstanding service to SIFMA and the industry. Ron is one of our longest-serving board members, and he also served on the SIA board before the merger. And he is, of course, an immensely talented and successful industry executive. I want to thank him for his leadership, counsel and friendship over the many years and look forward to his continuing leadership on our board.

I also want to take a moment to thank my SIFMA staff colleagues, an outstanding group of professionals with whom it is such an honor to work. None of our policy engagement, industry coordination, communications, and conferences like this one would be possible without their hard work and dedication.

As we look to future, the industry's agenda, which is our agenda, continues apace. As you will hear today, there is so much happening across industry operations, market-structure, product development, investor sentiment, and legal and regulatory activity. All of this is intertwined and without which we could not maintain investor confidence that allows the U.S. to have the deepest, most liquid markets, and that serves to fuel the underlying strength of our economy. The markets and our industry have changed a lot since 1792 and the Buttonwood Agreement, and I would submit that they have only gotten better year after year.

And with that, it is now my great pleasure to introduce our first speaker, David Lefkowitz, Managing Director and Global Head of ABS Origination at JPMorganChase, and SIFMA's 2026-2027 chair. Please join me in welcoming David to the stage.