Michael Schaftel has taken on an expanded role at Morgan Stanley and now oversees sales trading across multiple products. Prior to the move earlier this year, Schaftel ran equity sales trading for the Americas from the firm’s New York headquarters. The expanded area of coverage includes sales trading for derivatives and the firm’s electronic trading products-Morgan Stanley Electronic Trading (MSET)-which includes single-stock and program trading. Schaftel joined the firm in 1994 and spent eight years in Europe, where he rose to management positions in both sales trading and capital markets. He returned to the U.S. in a capital markets position before moving on to head sales trading.
RBC Capital Markets is this year’s Wings Over Wall Street’s Presenting Sponsor for the primary fund raiser held on September 25 at the New York Marriott Marquis. The capital markets group of RBC donated $100,000 as Presenting Sponsor. The Muscular Dystrophy Association and Wings Over Wall Street host this benefit each year to fund research for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS. Two senior RBC Capital Markets executives Robert Grubert, head of U.S. equities and sales trading, and Nick Ponzio, president and CEO of Hill Thompson Magid & Co. were the driving force behind this most generous donation.
Liquidnet promoted Ken Hight to global head of equities. Hight is still president and chief executive officer of Liquidnet’s Canadian subsidiary, a position he accepted in March. Before joining Liquidnet, Hight had been executive vice president of E*Trade Capital Markets since 2005. Before that he was president and chief executive officer of ITG Canada for five years.
Benjamin Chrnelich joined NYSE Euronext as a senior vice president and chief administrative officer of Advanced Trading Solutions, a unit of NYSE Euronext that provides connectivity, data management and transaction solutions for trading firms, vendors and financial markets. Chrnelich will be responsible for strategy, planning, business reporting and project management for the unit. He will report to Larry Leibowitz, group executive vice president and head of U.S. execution and global technology. Chrnelich joins NYSE Euronext from Lehman Brothers, where he was chief administrative officer for global equities sales and trading.
Will Easley, vice chairman of the Boston Options Exchange, will act as its interim leader. He replaces Scott Morris, who left the firm. Easley is one of the founders of BOX, which was established in 2002. Morris was named BOX’s chief executive in 2006. He had previously worked at Hull Trading, now part of Goldman Sachs, designing trading systems. In an unrelated move, BOX also hired Todd Rich as its new director of sales and marketing. Rich most recently served as the director of sales for the U.S. Futures Exchange. He is also a former options market maker at the Chicago Board Options Exchange. Rich reports to Alan Grigoletto, vice president of business development and marketing.
Stuart Breslow is now chief executive of Townsend Analytics, a unit of Lehman Brothers. In April, he replaced Jeff Wecker, who left the firm. Breslow was formerly Townsend’s chief information officer and a Lehman executive.
Jim Kelly joined Morgan Stanley to run its transition management group for the Americas as an executive director. Kelly, who spent 28 years on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, previously headed sales and client services for Bear Stearns’ transition management department.
Longtime institutional sales trader Rob Pizzella joined Merrill Lynch’s wealth management division in Boston as a managing director. Pizzella, a 21-year veteran who co-headed Merrill’s sales trading effort in Boston, now oversees an office of retail brokers.
Justin Denery joined WJB Capital Group as vice president, sales trading. For the past eight years he was a U.S. equity trader in the hardware, storage and wireless sectors on the proprietary trading desk at Goldman Sachs. Denery managed an $80 million proprietary trading account for Goldman and managed appropriate hedging strategies for the portfolio. He’ll be based in New York.
David Nelligan Jr. and James Runnels joined WJB Capital Group as institutional sales traders. Both arrive from GunnAllen Financial, in Tampa, Fla., where they worked briefly as a team. Nelligan and Runnels have developed a niche in Taft-Hartley retirement plans and endowments. They will obtain direction letters from institutional money managers to WJB. Both are based in New York.
Ed O’Malley joined PDQ Enterprises in Glenview, Ill., as the firm’s chief operating officer and is responsible for overseeing the business on a daily basis. PDQ offers a matching engine to exchanges and trade reporting facilities and was launched by trading guru Chris Keith in 2003. Having spent most of his 25-year career in business development at stock exchanges, including the National Stock Exchange, O’Malley was previously employed by prop shop Allston Trading, as the firm’s project coordinator.
Ellen Greene has been promoted to senior managing director of Nasdaq Transaction Services. She joined Nasdaq OMX in 1994 from the American Stock Exchange. Greene has been involved in NTS sales efforts for equities and options products since 2001. She now assumes daily responsibilities for managing the NTS sales team. Greene will be based in New York.
Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. has beefed up its New York-based options desk with the addition of two new sales traders. Walter Lamerton, a vice president, will spearhead Bernstein’s sales trading effort in options. He joined from SG Cowen. Lamerton has 10 years of experience in derivatives, covering a mix of hedge funds and traditional money managers. Johnny Madrid also joined Bernstein’s options desk as a sales trader and vice president. Madrid arrived after marketing structured derivative products at Goldman Sachs for about three years after graduating from college. Both report to Ralph Edwards, senior vice president in charge of options trading.
Peter Van Wely has a long history with EMS provider InfoReach. That’s one reason why InfoReach CEO Allen Zaydlin named Van Wely to head its new office in Amsterdam. “Peter brings a wealth of experience that will help InfoReach continue to move forward and grow,” Zaydlin said. “He is well acquainted with our products.” Van Wely was most recently head of capital markets at the brokerage firm Cognizant. In 2004, Cognizant acquired Van Wely’s former employer, InfoPulse, where he worked with InfoReach to distribute its FIX engine. Van Wely’s charge at InfoReach is to oversees both sales and customer service in Europe.
3D Markets, which operates Archangel, a new block crossing platform for options, made four new hires to assist in the start-up’s growth. Ed O’Connell, a 25-year veteran previously with Radnor Research & Trading, joins as a sales trader; Matt Buckard, a 15-year veteran previously with Tamale Software, joins as director of sales; Atul Ashar, previously with BNY ConvergEx Group, comes as director of technology; and Rich Danek, previously with Piper Jaffray, also joins the technology area. Stuart Filippone, head of sales, says the firm plans to continue to expand its sales force.
(c) 2008 Traders Magazine and SourceMedia, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
http://www.tradersmagazine.com http://www.sourcemedia.com/
