LaBranche & Company is the biggest firm of market-making experts on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE). The company has announced that it will review its strategic options due to a major decline in business. The specialist business decline resulted from the increase in automated trading. The company's action illustrates how rapidly electronic trading, both on and off the exchanges, has eroded what remains of the specialists' role. Some industry analysts believe the change may even bring an end to more than 200 years of human involvement in stock trading in New York. One analyst states that electronic trading has reduced the order volume handled by floor specialists as much as 75 percent. The investment bank, Bear Stearns, wrote down the value in May 2007 of Bear Wagner, a large specialist, by $225 million after buying out the minority shareholder of the firm at under book value. Bear Wagner's chief executive officer, Peter Murphy, says that the specialist system was quickly reaching a point where it was no longer viable as a business model. The chief financial officer of Bear Stearns, Sam Molinaro, says the specialist revenues have 'essentially evaporated' after the rollout of the hybrid market model at the NYSE. The hybrid market has been phased in since 2005. It combines electronic trading with the floor-based model historically used by the exchange. The NYSE has maintained that specialists are important to its business, but plans to close at least one of its five trading rooms.