CORE DUMP

The New York Stock Exchange suspended plans to give investors a "look at the book" last week. The initiative would have opened specialists' books listing pending buy and sell orders to other traders. NYSE officials cited lack of interest.

The New York Mercantile Exchange finalized an agreement with Task Management Inc. and American Telephone & Telegraph Co. to develop its ACCESS electronic after-hours trading system. The system had been announced earlier this year, and terminals running ACCESS software widely demonstrated. But some observers had said the three parties were having trouble getting to the dotted line. NYMEX is looking at a late 1992 launch.

Citicorp has put out an RFP to the nation's big telecommunications services companies to build a global network that would provide it with a more unified telecommunications system. The resulting network would be run by the winning bidder. Citicorp hopes to save $100 million a year once it is operational some time in 1993. Currently, Citicorp gets most of its services from AT&T and MCI.

The Commodity Exchange has expanded its online trade entry system to include up-to-the-minute reports of unmatched trades. Previously, unmatched trades were reported only hourly. The change is aimed at reducing discrepancies between traders' records and the system's main database.

In an effort to compete with the New York Stock Exchange's Crossing Sessions and the Pacific Stock Exchange's extended hours, the National Association of Securities Dealers has asked the Securities and Exchange Commission to extend the hours of operation of its SelectNet automated trading system. The request is for an extra hour and 45 minutes, distributed at both the beginning and the end of the current trading day.

Citibank vice president Gail Port has been named head of systems development for trading systems and corporate finance in its Global Finance/North America unit. She reports to Joe Castellano, vice president of information systems at the unit. She succeeds Doree Gerold, who left the bank.

The top program trading firms on the New York Stock Exchange in the week of Oct. 14 were Morgan Stanley & Co., Susquehanna, Thomas Williams, First Boston Corp. and PaineWebber Inc. During the week of Oct. 21, they were Nomura Securities, Morgan Stanley, Kidder Peabody & Co., First Boston and W&D Securities.

Robert W. Baird & Co. Inc., a Milwaukee, Wis., investment bank signed up SunGard Data Systems Inc.'s Phase3 Systems Inc.'s to provide a real-time securities processing system. Baird is owned by the Regis Group Inc., a subsidiary of Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance Co. It will use the software for back-office and front-office components of its sales, order-processing and trading departments.

John Deesom, senior vice president of systems technology at the American Stock Exchange, was forced out two weeks ago after his position was eliminated as part of the restructuring that resulted from the launch of the AMEX's new Curb exchange. Deesom had been involved in designing an electronic specialists' book; that job has been shifted to Warren Kaiser, vice president of information technology.

The first Mexican commodities exchange is set for a mid- 1993 opening in Mexico City. Plans call for an open-outcry market modeled on U.S. exchanges. In setting it up, the Mexican agricultural ministry says it will seek advice from the Chicago Mercantile Exchange and the Chicago Board of Trade.