Moving And Shaking At Leading Market Technologies

Leading Market Technologies Inc. has experienced some major staff upheaval in recent weeks. The graphical spreadsheet vendor has seen the resignation, hiring and relocation of several sales and technology employees in the vendor's New York and Boston offices. At the same time, LMT has opened a new office in London and has made plans to relocate and expand its New York office.

Meanwhile, the vendor's Cambridge, Mass., head office has itself not been immune from changes. Most notable among them, says Smith, is the hiring of Jack Walsh, one-time vice president of marketing at the troubled Globex electronic futures trading system. Walsh, who was hired last October, is Cambridge's vice president of sales. Since he left Globex more than a year ago, Walsh has been a consultant to Telekurs (North America) Inc.

LMT's new office in London, which opened Jan. 31., will be headed up by Rachel England-Orliac, a business development director who transferred from LMT's Cambridge head office. According to LMT chairman Jay Smith, Orliac is tasked with recruiting a staff of four local sales and technical executives who will handle international accounts.

The New York office has experienced the most turnover. Senior account executive Stacy Owens will leave LMT Feb. 15 for a position with IBM's securities and consulting group. Sales engineer Paula Scott resigned Jan. 21; she takes a job with Salomon Brothers Inc. Owens, who was offered a senior marketing post in LMT's Cambridge office, says she declined the offer because she wanted to stay in the New York City metropolitan area. Scott could not be reached for comment, but LMT officials say she is leaving for personal reasons.

To fill Scott's position, Smith says LMT has hired Shane Artis -- who had previously worked with Digital Signal Processing, LMT's sister company. Smith says LMT also intends to hire two new account executives -- a New York sales managing director and a senior account executive -- sometime this month. The senior account executive will replace Owens.

According to Smith, the New York office will relocate from its current 53 Wall St. headquarters to one of two locations -- either 2 Wall St. or 100 Wall St. -- by March. Smith says that after LMT relocates, the New York office will have expanded from two employees to 10. The staff expansion will take place by the end of the second quarter, says Smith.

Smith adds that Frank Russell, who previously worked in marketing for the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, has been appointed managing director of New York's new financial engineering division. LMT officials say that Russell, who was hired in January, will help users exploit the "analytical potential" of the vendor's Expo graphical spreadsheet product. In addition, Smith says, the vendor has transferred an office manager from Cambridge to New York.

In January, LMT also added Sarah Magoun and Carolyn Covalt to the Cambridge staff. Smith says that Magoun, formerly of the Easel Corp., currently serves as a senior sales engineer involved in "pre-sales and applications development." Covalt, who previously worked for a government agency in Japan, is Cambridge's manager of marketing and administration.