IN BRIEF

On Sept. 7, the Deutsche Borse (DB) and Wiener Borse were granted regulatory approval to launch a new stock exchange that will trade Central and Eastern European equities. Dubbed NEWEX (New Europe Exchange), the joint venture will make use of the DB-s Xetra trading engine and will cover stocks traded in the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Russia. All NEWEX trades executed over Xetra will be cleared through Clearstream.

Wall Street Systems, a supplier of trade management and treasury systems, has hired three new staffers to lead its B2B e-commerce strategy. Anthony Sardinas has been named e-commerce commercial officer, Santo Crisafulli has been tabbed e-commerce application development manager, and Collin Barker has been appointed e-commerce business development director. Sardinas most recently worked as the marketing and operations partner at Oasis Inc.; Crisafulli last worked as a vp at Interim Services; and Barker previously headed up the consulting business of Synopsis--a unit of ACT Financial.

Eurex, the all-electronic German derivatives market that recently launched a joint venture with the Chicago Board of Trade, reported last week that roughly 302 million contracts were traded at the exchange through August. That figure represents an increase of roughly 23% from the volume Eurex accumulated in the first eight months of 1999. In the month of August alone, Eurex traded 33.7 million contracts--including 11.1 million German Bund contracts.

The International Securities Exchange--the all-electronic U.S. options market--has promoted Paul Bennett to senior vice president of market operations. Bennett is now responsible for market operations, product management and industry project initiatives at the ISE. Previously, Bennett, who joined the exchange in January 1999, held the title of vp and project director of technology.