CORE DUMP

Big news from the FIA show in Boca: Globex partners announced that four New York commodity exchanges -- the Commodity, Coffee, Sugar & Cocoa, New York Futures and New York Cotton exchanges -- plan to participate in their proposed futures trading system. NYMEX is also eager to participate. Not.

At the FIA, Globex Corp. chairman Leo Melamed said he expects the system to go live this year. Rumor has it that a 250-position re-test of the system, after tests failed earlier this month, will take place by month end, Melamed said.

Jerry Goldberg, former head of capital markets systems at PaineWebber Inc., has been recruited by Fidelity Management & Research Corp. Goldberg will lead that firm's capital markets systems group, reporting to Albert Aiello, president of Fidelity Systems.

First Interstate Bank of Los Angeles is in a holding pattern awaiting its merger with Standard Chartered Bank. But the two are expected to compare notes on trading-room systems, among other issues, once the merger is completed. Standard Chartered's L.A. trading room uses primarily standalone market data services from Reuters, Telerate and Bloomberg. Troubled First Interstate, whose staff has been shrinking for some time, continues to use Teknekron Software Systems' TIB for data distribution and display on IBM RS/6000 workstations, despite problems with that implementation (TST, March 25, 1991).

Neil Strauss has taken a position in First Boston's IS department, reporting to another recent hire, Chip Steinmetz (TST, March 9). Strauss, whose expertise is in UNIX, was formerly the chief architect at Quotron. Meanwhile, Roml Lefkowitz -- who quit FBC at the turn of the year (TST, Feb. 10) -- has taken a consulting assignment at Morgan Stanley.

Morgan Stanley managing director John Mack -- the fixed- income trading chief who has been influential in technology directions taken firmwide (TST, Feb. 24) -- was promoted to a newly created No. 3 spot, chief operating officer.

Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities leased space in the Bulova building in Astoria, Queens, for a disaster recovery site. The site, which will be equipped with some of the technology being replaced in Madoff's ongoing trading-room upgrade, will provide back-up systems support for traders from Madoff and its correspondent firms.

Rolfe & Nolan, a European vendor of futures and options accounting and administrative systems, has acquired a nearly 20 percent share of Brokerage Systems Inc., which sells similar systems in the U.S.

The Committee On Options Proposals (COOP) asked the SEC not to abandon consideration of a proposal to provide an electronic linkage among exchanges trading multiply listed options. Citing the cost of such a linkage, the COOP offered instead a plan involving hotline phone contact and the gradual creation of a consolidated option tape.

The top program traders for the week of Feb. 24 through 28 were First Boston, Morgan Stanley, Merrill Lynch, PaineWebber and Nomura Securities.