HERD

Karen Sosnick, vice president of product marketing at Knight-Ridder Financial will leave her post at the vendor effective Oct. 7. According to an internal announcement issued by K-R Financial president Paul Tucker, Sosnick will take a marketing position with Sweets, a construction- industry information services company. She resigned last Monday after five years with Knight-Ridder. According to the internal announcement: "The move will give Karen the opportunity to fulfill her ambition to gain experience outside the financial information industry. It will also require less travel and will allow her to continue to reside in New York City."

Financial Information Inc. has hired Gil Michalsky as vice president of product development, sales and marketing. Previously, Michalsky was product marketing manager for taxable evaluations for Kenny S&P Evaluation Services, a subsidiary of McGraw-Hill. Michalsky had been at Kenny since 1991 in various capacities. Among other things, he had responsibility at Kenny for marketing the taxable evaluations produced by Kenny/EJV Taxable Evaluations, an alliance of Kenny S&P and the EJV Partners.

McGraw-Hill named Frank Rizzo executive managing director and chairman of the Ratings Policy Group at Standard & Poor's Ratings Group. The chair's duties previously fell to Leo McNeill, who is president and chief ratings officer of the Ratings Group. Rizzo's prior post was as executive managing director of S&P's structured finance group. The moves are effective Oct. 1.

VNU Business Information Services Inc.'s Disclosure named Robert Shotwell executive vice president of technology and production. Before coming to work for the vendor, he was vice president for technology at Freddie Mac.

Ernest Miller left his post as project manager at First Boston Corp. last month for a spot at J.P. Morgan & Co. At Morgan, he is technical market data analyst. As such, Miller oversees relationships with market data vendors and reports to vice president Kevin Scully.