Bullish Names Former NYSE President to Link Traditional Markets With Blockchain

Key Facts

Bullish announced on November 9, 2026, that it had appointed Stacey Cunningham, the former president of the New York Stock Exchange, as its president, saying the move is part of a strategy to connect traditional capital-markets infrastructure with blockchain technology. The appointment puts a leader with direct experience operating equity markets and working with issuers and investors at the head of the company. Bullish said Cunningham spent more than three decades at the intersection of issuers and investors, and that her experience would support efforts to modernize financial-market infrastructure. The decision comes as the company seeks to combine regulated-market services with digital tools linked to tokenized securities. Cunningham’s experience at traditional trading institutions gives the appointment an operational dimension as the company seeks to expand those services.

Chief Executive Tom Farley said Cunningham combines deep expertise in market structure with operational experience and issuer relationships built over decades. He added that those skills would give her a “pivotal role” in building the next generation of services for market participants. The statement did not describe her role as leading the company’s strategy, instead focusing on her contribution to developing services. Cunningham said trusted public-market infrastructure presents an opportunity to make markets “more efficient, interconnected and accessible.” She added that she looked forward to supporting existing services and creating new ways to connect companies with investors.

Cunningham led NYSE Group, becoming the first woman to lead the exchange group, and also served as chief operating officer of the New York Stock Exchange and held senior leadership roles at Nasdaq. She currently serves on the boards of Cloudflare, the New York Stock Exchange and Georgetown University’s Psaros Center for Financial Markets and Policy. She was also an operating partner at Advent and an adviser to Uniswap Labs. These positions place her experience at the intersection of traditional financial infrastructure and digital technologies. She became NYSE president in 2018, according to the exchange’s history.

The move is tied to Bullish’s planned acquisition of Equiniti, announced in May 2026 at a value of $4.2 billion. Equiniti serves nearly 3,000 issuers and more than 20 million shareholders, linking the deal to ownership-record and shareholder-services operations at scale. The announced price includes $1.85 billion of Equiniti debt assumed and about $2.35 billion in Bullish shares, according to Equiniti. Bullish says combining Equiniti’s ownership records and shareholder services with its regulated trading capabilities will provide a foundation for expanding tokenized-securities services. The deal has not yet closed; the company expects completion in January 2027, subject to regulatory approvals and customary closing conditions.

Bullish says it has received regulatory approval to trade tokenized securities in Gibraltar and launched issuer-backed trading in its tokenized shares. That adds an existing business to the expansion plan tied to the Equiniti deal, whose completion remains in the future. When the acquisition was announced on May 5, 2026, Bullish shares fell about 6% in premarket trading, according to Reuters via Investing.com. The company then estimated annual revenue growth of 6% to 8% for the combined entity during 2027 to 2029. It also projected annual growth of more than $100 million in earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization after capital expenditures.

Bullish’s second-quarter 2026 results show a divergence between growth in adjusted revenue and a shift to a net loss. Adjusted revenue was $92.6 million, compared with $57.0 million in the second quarter of 2025. In contrast, the company posted a net loss of $280.0 million, after recording net income of $108.3 million in the year-earlier period. Bullish is scheduled to hold its third-quarter 2026 earnings call on November 18, 2026, at 8:30 a.m. Eastern time. That comes nine days after the announcement of Cunningham’s appointment, while the Equiniti deal is still expected to close in January 2027.