Trading: TradeWeb Appoints Roger Barton to Oversee Sell side Development for European Operations, and more stories.

TradeWeb Appoints Roger Barton to Oversee Sell side Development for European Operations

TradeWeb named Roger Barton, a Goldman Sachs executive, as a managing director within the firm's European operations, the online fixed-income trading platform announced on Wednesday. He will be responsible for business development for TradeWeb's sellside clients in Europe.

Barton was previously an executive director and head of European e-commerce operations for Goldman's fixed-income and equity divisions.

While holding his position at Goldman, Barton also chaired TradeWeb's executive committee, prior to its acquisition by Thomson Financial last year.

He also served as managing director of Goldman Sachs' futures operations before his appointment to BrokerTec Global, the inter-dealer broker where he was in charge of futures trading and clearing services.

Prior to that, Barton worked at the London International Financial Futures and Options Exchange (LIFFE). During the 12-year tenure at LIFFE, Barton was managing director of technical services as well as managing director of business development.

In his new role, Barton is responsible for TradeWeb's dealer clients. He will be based in London and will report to Lee Olesky, president of Thomson TradeWeb.

Swapstream Names CTO

Swapstream tapped Florentin Bosse as chief technology officer (CTO) of the multilateral electronic trading platform for medium and long-term interest-rate swaps.

Bosse was previously with Commerzbank where for four year he was global head of fixed income IT and front office systems. He brings over 15 years of experience at leading financial institutions including six years at Deutsche Bank, two years at DG Bank and five years at Citibank.

In a statement in the release, Bosse praises Swapstream's technology, connectivity and partnerships as contributing to the system's position of strength, noting that the industry has begun to have "true confidence in electronic trading options."

Institutional Broker Launches Division Specializing in Algorithmic Trading

TradeTek Securities, an institutional brokerage firm based in Newark, NJ., launched Algorithmic Trading Solutions, an equity trading division whose business is focused on algorithms.

The firm says it will provide institutional investors with algorithm-based electronic order execution and order placement. The firm uses proprietary technology that is based on many of the principles that drive today's military weapons systems, it says.

Several of the firm's principals served in the military but also designed systems at defense contractors before joining the financial industry.

The firm's founder and president, Frederick Garboyes, led Bank Of New York's program trading group for several years and was a portfolio manager and head trader for IMTECH, an asset management division of Prudential Financial. There he developed computer-driven portfolio management algorithms and trading systems. Garboyes is a former company commander with the 82nd Airborne Division and a director of research for GEC Marconi Avionics.

The firm says it will use the speed and stealth of its technology to reduce transaction costs more efficiently than legacy trading desks, which largely rely on traders to execute orders.

As a pure electronic agency broker, the firm contends it avoids the potential conflicts of interest that are common to the institutional brokerage industry.

The firm says it provides clients with pre-trade analytics so clients can assess the potential risks and costs of executing a trade. It also supplies post-trade analysis and benchmarks the firm's final results against the pre-trade assessment and client-supplied benchmarks.

Pat Systems Spruces Up Existing Platform with New Front-End

Patsystems has upgraded its existing trading platform with Pro-Trade, a new front-end for high-volume professionals . Pro-Mark is part of the development of TradeMark, its next generation platform.

ProMark will operate on both the existing platform and TradeMark.

Other system improvements to the existing platform include: real time monitoring of operating system performance, so the company as well as customers can automatically monitor application availability and start and end-of-day processing around the clock. There is also improved discovery, including the automation of mission critical back-up procedures such as the distribution of data between live and disaster recovery systems. Another result is higher availability and clustering options, providing automated fail over of key components as well as a single sign-on and high performance market-data server.

New functions added to the platform include rapid file upload from external files such as Excel spreadsheets, options crossing and a Synthetic Order Management module (known as SyOMS), allowing for the automatic execution of transactions (i.e., strategies, tops, timed orders and good till canceled or GTCs that are not supported by an exchange)