Shifting Gears -- People & Careers

Whalen Named CIO of RJO

Chicago-based R.J. O'Brien and Associates (RJO), a futures commission merchant and independent futures brokerage firm, appointed Terrence Whalen as CIO. Whalen is responsible for the development, implementation and management of RJO's trading and information technology.

One of Whalen's goals in this newly created position is to ensure that the firm has process and methodology in place that will make the most out of employees' application development talent. "When you come into an environment where process and methodology haven't been focused on, it's a cultural and a skill-level challenge," he relates.

Whalen formerly worked at the Lincoln Financial Group as CIO for its First Penn Pacific Life affiliate. He also served as an officer in the information technology division of CNA Financial Insurance. "I've worked at some fairly large enterprises where the applications environment would be characterized as high-volume, large-scale, with high availability transaction processing," he says. "That's exactly what were looking to do at RJO."

Lee Establishes Aite Group

Sang Lee, cofounder and former manager of the securities and investment practice at Celent Communications, recently started his own research firm. The Boston, Mass.-based Aite (pronounced eye-tay) Group joins the ranks of Celent, TowerGroup, The Tabb Group and Financial Insights as a source for financial IT research and advice.

Lee believes that the differentiating factor of the Aite Group will be its "three-prong approach" to dissecting relevant industry events. He says its analysts will strive to examine issues from IT, business and regulatory perspectives. Lee adds that the main goal of the firm can be gleaned from its name; "aite" means counterpart in Japanese. "We want to be a lot more proactive in serving our clients, not only in providing them with timely holistic research, but also trying to see if we could become a true partner," he says.

Deloitte Appoints AML Authority

Alan Abel joined Deloitte & Touche as head of its anti-money laundering (AML) risk management services group in its U.S. Forensic and Dispute Service practice. A certified public accountant, Abel developed and led the AML services practice for Coopers & Lybrand in 1992.

"There are very few AML practitioners who are accountants by trade, and I'm able to bring to the table that side of things," Abel says. He explains that before he joined Deloitte & Touche, the firm's focus was mostly law enforcement and forensic services. "My background is more regulatory compliance and risk management," he adds. Abel is based in Washington, D.C.

Keeping Tabs

Alan Sislen joined the board of directors of Placemark Investments. He's currently president of Managed Account Perspectives and has held various positions at Merrill Lynch for more than 30 years.

SunGard Data Management Solutions named Ariel Aloni as chief architect. He previously served as chief architect at EBS and director of data messaging at Merrill Lynch.

Brian Shea joined the NASD board of governors as chair of the National Adjudicatory Council (NAC). Currently COO of Pershing, Shea will serve a one-year term.

BrownCo, the online brokerage offering of JPMorgan Invest, named Richard Hart as VP and director of operations. Formerly, Hart managed the technology sales and operations of Penson Financial services.