CHICAGO - A JURY said on Tuesday that former New York Stock Exchange president Gerald Putnam cheated his former partner out of millions of dollars in a business venture that was central to the migration of exchange trading from pits to computer screens.

Putnam and two others were ordered to pay US$11 million (S$15 million) to Lewis Borsellino, a former Chicago Mercantile Exchange trader who accused them of fraud when they bought him out of a partnership that created a now-defunct electronic trading firm, Chicago Trading & Arbitrage (CTA).

The verdict, delivered in the Circuit Court of Cook County, Illinois, marks a climax in the clash of two well-known figures from the Chicago financial industry.

'I'm glad the world knows that the former head of the New York Stock Exchange is a liar and a cheat,' Mr Borsellino said after the trial. Putnam declined to comment.

Mr Borsellino said he was disappointed by the amount of the damages, but his attorney Jon Loevy said the jury had not awarded punitive damages and that he would seek that money separately.

Mr Borsellino claimed that Archipelago Holdings, an electronic trading company, which later merged with the NYSE and brought Putnam a fortune, is a CTA offshoot and that he was entitled to US$30 million to US$50 million for what should have been his stake. -- REUTERS