Patent ID: 7539641

Claim:
A computer-implemented method for providing an announcement of a security, and bid and/or offer terms thereof, comprising: electrically determining the exchange of said announcement between at least one dealer and investors; electrically transmitting said announcement of the security and bid and/or offer terms thereof to a computer of the investors listing the available issues from the at least one dealer so that each investor can access the security announcement via his or her respective investor computer interface, and providing the investors immediate access to a multi-dealer inventory of issues responsive to the announcement including a calendar on which issues are placed prior to the time they are priced, and the calendar indicating at least one of a lead manager, a status of the issue, price talk, the coupon, maturity, rating, benchmark, and bookrunner, where an available issue may be handled one dealer or a group of dealers, the group of dealers led by one or more co-managers; electrically receiving from the investors indications of interest in response to the announcement; electrically enabling investors to submit indications of interest to only one or more selected dealers; electrically enabling investors to determine whether additional dealers are informed that indications of interest were sent to other dealers; electrically providing a notice to the investor providing terms associated with the indication of interest that must be accepted before the indication of interest is sent; receiving an indication from an investor whether an indication of interest is to be re-confirmed or auto-accepted; electrically providing a real-time status and history of an investor's indication of interest, the status and history indicating history notices, whether a price has been confirmed, an allocation has been verified, an allocation is available and should be verified, an indication of interest has been verified, an indication of interest should be reviewed and verified, or an indication of interest has been submitted; electrically enabling the investors to view additional indications of interest that have been submitted; electrically determining at least one of an allocation and a price for the security based upon the received indications of interest; electrically transmitting to the investors that the indication of interest has been allocated; displaying final pricing information to the investors; and electrically providing a timer to indicate a time to complete a transaction, where the time can be different for different dealers.