CBOE Origin Remembrances: Jim Dalton

By Lawrence G. McMillan

Jim Dalton was the first Marketing Director of the CBOE, and he was hired by Joe Sullivan to put together the marketing team for the exchange. As Joe Sullivan wrote in his recounting of the era (be sure to read that recount as well), “Jim Dalton...built the best marketing team assembled at any exchange in that era if not ever.”

Personally, Jim is important to me (your editor) because when the head of the New York Institute of Finance was looking for someone to write a book on option strategies, he contacted Jim Dalton, among other people. Jim told him that there was some young guy at Thomson McKinnon that was writing about option strategies and suggested that the publisher contact me. He did, I submitted a long 35-page outline, which was accepted, and that’s how Options As A Strategic Investment was born.
 

I was running the Institutional Options Department for Paine Webber in 1973 when Joe Sullivan hired me to lead marketing for the CBOE. I was a member of both the CBOT and CBOE and had to relinquish both memberships once I became an official employee.

My first task was assembling an exceptional team: Ivers Riley, Dan Skelton, and Jim Emerson. We truly were a team. When we would travel we were known as “the CBOE”—people sometimes called us by the wrong names, but that was okay as long as they knew we were “the exchange.”

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