At the Fidelity Executive Forum in late April, Fidelity Brokerage Company's National Financial (NF) clearing firm unit demonstrated a number of new services and products available to its correspondent broker/dealers and institutional clients. They include a data aggregation program for brokers that will be integrated over the next few months through National Financial's Streetscape workstation through an alliance with New York-based Miningham & Oellerich, which gathers "clean data," said NF, "all the way down to the customer account level." Fidelity calls the relationship with M&O "the initial phase of a comprehensive aggregation strategy." NF also announced Reuters Station, a Bloomberg-like market data and transactional workstation designed especially for its institutional clients. Norman Malo, president of NF, said the company had already achieved substantial growth through its acquisitions over the past two years of Fiserv Inc.'s clearing business and UBS's Correspondent Services Corp. But Malo said NF's goal is to "become a premier provider of services to the B/D community," and argued that it already provides "a broader solution than the wirehouses" to the 65,000 brokers who do business through the firm.
For the first time in the history of the NASD, a father/son duo has been elected to the NASD board. The father, Ron Kovack, 68, chairman of Kovack Securities Inc., a broker/dealer firm in Fort Lauderdale, Florida and the son, Brian Kovack, 31, president of the firm, were elected to the NASD District Committee (which includes Georgia, Florida, North Carolina, South Carolina, Puerto Rico, and the Virgin Islands) and the NASD National Board of Governors in Washington D.C., respectively…
The NASD also announced promotions for three of its top executives. Douglas Shulman, president of markets, services, and information was named vice chairman. Stephen Luparello has been promoted from executive vice president for market regulations to senior executive vice president. Elisse Walter has been promoted from executive vice president for regulatory policy and programs to senior executive vice president.
