Bruce Aust is a Board Member of the Société L’Avenir at RIDGE-LANE LP.
Mr. Aust served as Vice Chairman of Nasdaq, where he assisted technology clients worldwide in successful IPOs, such as DocuSign, Dropbox, Stitch Fix, Coupa, Atlassian, and Lyft. During his 20+ year-tenure, Nasdaq won some of the largest IPOs in history including Google, Facebook, Tesla, Carlyle Group, and Dunkin Brands. He has assisted over 300 companies go public and was responsible for maintaining relationships with major Nasdaq listed company CEO's, such as Cisco, Apple, Intel, Qualcomm, and Starbucks.
He was Executive Vice President of Nasdaq, where he led new listings and capital market business as well as global business development and C-suite relationship management with 3,900 companies on Nasdaq’s 16 listing markets worldwide. He transformed the exchange industry through a successful battle won against rival, NYSE, obtaining an SEC ruling in favor of Nasdaq, allowing companies to keep their stock symbols if they switched venues, while also allowing Nasdaq stocks to have 1, 2 and 3 letter symbols – a victory making Nasdaq more competitive. This hard-fought win enabled NYSE company switches to the Nasdaq – delivering over $1T – on company switches that included Pepsi, Walgreens, American Airlines, Marriott, Mattel, Vodafone, United Airlines, DreamWorks, Newscorp, Viacom, Willis Towers Watson, TD Ameritrade, E-Trade, Principal Financials and others.
He was a key executive team leader that transformed growth from $250M to $2.5B in revenue through diversification, including key acquisitions, such as OMX/Nordic Stock Markets, to companies in Investor Relations, Corporate Governance and PR/Newswire businesses. Under his leadership, Global Listing Services revenue tripled from $160M to $530M through organic growth and strategic acquisitions, while continuing to improve margins and diversifying recurring revenue. He has been instrumental in leading Nasdaq’s international investor program, providing listed companies with exposure to institutional investors in Europe and Asia. Bruce has redefined what a Nasdaq listing means – while also maintaining relationships with C-suite of the largest companies listed – Alphabet, Microsoft, Amgen, Netflix, Amazon, Newscorp, and T-Mobile.
Mr. Aust served as a member of the Board of Directors for Nasdaq Private Market, Nasdaq Corporate Services, the Nasdaq Entrepreneurial Center. He is an executive committee member of TechNet.
