ELECTRONIC TRADING NEWSFLASHES

Deutsche Bank is offering foreign-exchange (FX) prime brokerage services on LavaFX, the new electronic foreign-exchange product suite from Lava Trading Inc. Lava says several major banks and financial service providers signed onto use LavaFX, though it did not disclose client names. Known for direct-access and aggregation technology in equities trading, Lava announced its intention to introduce FX trading on the Lava platform this year and to try to spur the industry toward a more electronic marketplace. Lava says electronic trading volumes are growing sharply in the $1.9 trillion per-day global FX market, which is leading to greater demand for trading efficiency and transparency.

The LavaFX product suite aggregates multiple sources of liquidity, including single bank and multibank portals, together with direct customer orders, into a live dealable central order book. Traders can access the system through a desktop user interface or via a Financial Information Exchange protocol application programming interface for model and program traders. Lava provides market data and depth-of-book and allows posting of bids and offers with Lava's proprietary order instructions. The product provides for anonymous trading via prime brokers and sponsoring banks.

Barclays Capital named Andrew Whitney director and head of information technology for commodities, foreign exchange, emerging markets and money markets. Based in London, Whitney is responsible for development of electronic-trading platforms and the IT applications for those businesses. He reports to Kevin O' Reilly, managing director and head of IT and strategic planning. Whitney joins the firm from UBS in London where he was a managing director responsible for the firm's Pan-European banking platform.

Adam Sussman left Ameritrade Inc. to join The Tabb Group as a consultant in its New York office. At Ameritrade, he served as a senior product manager responsible for order-management systems, routing and next-generation trading tools focused on equities and options markets. Sussman joined Ameritrade in 2002 with its acquisition of Datek Online and worked on the merger of both companies' technologies. The Tabb Group is a Westborough, Mass.-based financial markets technology strategy and planning