BOCA RATON, Nov 8: Brokers, traders and other financial executives in recent years have discussed lofty topics like overseas expansion, industry consolidation and changes in market structure at their annual Florida retreat.

This year, there’s only one topic: survival.

It’s about how to conduct business in more uncertain times, said Robin Sojcher, vice president of marketing at OptiMark Inc., which provides trading technology for the securities industry. I think we are over the heyday of last year.

The financial industry, which gathers this week in Boca Raton, Florida, for the annual Securities Industry Association meeting, is suffering from a witch’s brew of a weak economy, a falling stock market and the uncertainty created by the Sept. 11, attacks. It’s been raining pink slips on Wall Street, and it’s anybody’s guess when business will turn around.

The SIA meeting, long a favorite of financial workers because of its sunny location and proximity to the beach and golf courses, is feeling the strains. The SIA registered 452 people for this year’s conference, down about 35 per cent from the 700 who attended in 2000.

A slow trickle of attendees streamed in to SIA’s registration desk on Wednesday afternoon at the posh Boca Raton Resort & Club to pick up their information kits for the meeting. Armed police officers roamed the near-empty halls of the resort’s conference center, making sure the few people who had arrived were wearing proper identification badges.

The New York Stock Exchange, a pillar of Wall Street since 1792, is considering conducting its daily trading operations in two separate locations. Splitting up its storied trading floor would allow the Big Board, which has said it is not leaving New York, to quickly reopen the market if one site were attacked.

The slipping stock market has cut into trading profits at some of Wall Street’s largest firms. Investment banks have also been hurt by the dearth of initial public offerings and mergers as the weak environment has made companies less willing to float shares or use stock as currency in takeover deals.

In the third quarter, Merrill Lynch and Co. Inc. cut 2,300 jobs and reported its worst profit since the fourth quarter of 1998. Rivals such as Bear Stearns Cos. Inc. and Credit Suisse First Boston have recently said they were cutting about 7 per cent of their staff in the face of declining profits.

Even the Nasdaq stock market, the face of the technology driven bull run of the late 1990s, was forced to cut about 10 per cent of work force earlier this year because the lack of IPOs cut into revenues.—Reuters