HERD

Thomson Financial Services Inc. (TFS) has a new president and chief executive officer: Mason Slaine, previously chief executive of TFS' publishing group, has replaced Andy Mills as the head of all TFS. The executive shuffle accompanies a major restructuring at Thomson. Mills was bumped up to head a newly created group called the Financial and Professional Publishing Group, which encompasses TFS, among other things. The reorganization -- which went into effect May 1 -- split Thomson's former Information/Publishing Group into two units: the new one, headed by Mills, and a Business, Education and Information group (BEIG). Meanwhile, Keith Jarret and Mike Danziger have been named executive vice presidents of TFS, and will sit on a new, so-called strategy council, tasked with coordinating the activities of the two recently estranged groups. These permutations come in anticipation of Robert Hall's retirement; Hall is the chief executive of the now disbanded Information/Publishing Group. Hall is slated to retire Jan. 1, 1995. Mills will report to Hall until then.

Disclosure Corp., a wholly owned subsidiary of VNU Business Information Services Inc., has named William O'Conor vice president of its database division; the position is new. O'Conor was previously managing director of a joint venture of VNU's Disclosure and Wright Investors' Services Inc., called Worldscope/Disclosure Partners. Before Joining Worldscope in 1992, O'Conor was director of electronic product services for Standard & Poor's Inc. At his new post, O'Conor will be responsible for Disclosure's corporate database portfolio -- including the Worldscope line of international company databases. O'Conor will also be responsible for the formation of third-party relationships for distribution of Access Disclosure, an electronic index of some three million SEC filings and company documents.

Thomson Financial Services Inc.'s First Call Corp. appointed Stanley Levine to the new position of director of quantitative research within First Call's quantitative services group. Levine comes to First Call following a 14- year tenure at Institutional Brokers Estimate Systems Inc. (I/B/E/S), a New York-based earnings estimate service, where he served most recently as senior vice president and director of development. At First Call, Levine will aid in the strategic and global development of quantitative products derived from First Call's Real Time Earnings Estimates (RTEE) database. Michael Bishop, general manager of First Call quantitative studies, says that Levine's appointment is indicative of First Call's wish to expand its "earnings estimates business into the quantitative arena."

Dow Jones Telerate's Jersey City, N.J., office has run an ad looking for experienced account managers responsible for the New York/New Jersey areas; a client support representative to provide training and on-going support to Telerate customers; and an account manager with three to five years direct sales experience with a market data vendor. The latter employee would be assigned to sell foreign exchange transactional services and trading systems to commercial and investment banks, the ad says. (That sounds like Minex and TTRS to us.)

ILX is using the dailies to find a senior database programmer, a database programmer and a Unix system programmer. ILX also is pursuing the following systems staffers: a test lab supervisor, junior software testers and a market data quality analyst.