Reuters Replaces Will Kennedy: Pistone Gets Downtown As Mazzola Moves To Midtown

Reuters America has moved downtown New York City district chief Mike Mazzola to head midtown, replacing Will Kennedy, who resigned last month as midtown New York City district head. After weighing a host of internal candidates, Reuters two weeks ago appointed Janet Pistone, previously a vice president in the Database Service Division, to assume the post of downtown district head.

Those candidates disappointed in their quest for Kennedy's post may have another prospect for promotion. Earlier this month, Max Finucane announced that come year-end he will be vacating his position as president of Reuters Canada Ltd.

Sources say the vendor elected to shuffle posts in New York City in part because New York midtown will be handling an increasing number of key accounts in the months to come, making an experienced district head critical.

Midtown sales is responsible for both Goldman Sachs and Chemical Bank, each of which is in the final stages of evaluating Reuters to outfit 450-plus-position trading rooms with data and data distribution systems.

Both Pistone and Mazzola will report to William O'Shea, executive vice president. O'Shea in turn answers directly to Reuters America (RAM) president Brian Vaughan.

Pistone brings to the post a strong sales bent, with experience most recently selling Reuters' historical data as vice president in charge of sales and later of sales, marketing and development globally for Reuters' Historical Information Products group.

Pistone first entered the market data industry in 1979 at an entry-level position at Interactive Data Corp. At IDC, Pistone held a series of increasingly elevated sales-oriented positions until 1986, when she departed for a brief stint at Lotus Development Corp. in San Francisco.

Later in 1986, Pistone joined Reuters in San Francisco as Western regional sales manager, selling both real-time and historical data and services. In 1988, she transferred to New York as director of sales, a post she held until moving to Historical Information Products in 1990.

Pistone's promotion deprived a number of other candidates of what has become an increasingly infrequent opportunity for advancement in recent Reuters' history.

Sources say a wide field of candidates was surveyed. Among the candidates was Brian DeLacy, say sources, who as vice president, Northeast District, now handles parallel tasks from Boston. Others include Reuters' midtown and downtown district sales heads, Ann Gorrie and John Naughton, respectively.

A smaller number of possible replacements was more closely examined, sources say, among them Doug Jeffrey, vice president, information management systems, and Richard Pisani, vice president of transaction products.

But a fresh round of canvassing is in order, as Reuters hunts for a successor to Finucane in Canada. Finucane is leaving around the end of the year, for reasons he describes as "purely personal."

After Finucane ends what has been a 20-year career at Reuters, he will move to Europe. Although he says he has no specific plans, Finucane allows he is unlikely to reappear in the market data industry.

Finucane made his inclination known earlier this month, and no replacement has yet been announced.

At the same time, Reuters has been engaged in a search for an international, or global, accounts representative to replace Aron Karp. Karp -- who had been based in the downtown New York district sales -- departed recently for Govpx Inc., where he will bear the title of senior vice president for sales (IMD, Nov. 9).

Relocating to Chicago, Kennedy left Reuters to join Delphi Information Systems Inc. as executive vice president in charge of sales and marketing (IMD, Oct. 12). Delphi is an insurance software firm based in Rolling Meadows, Ill., a Chicago suburb.

Following Kennedy's departure, his responsibilities were shouldered by midtown staff while O'Shea conducted his search for a replacement.

O'Shea first elected to move Mazzola to midtown, sources say, and subsequently finalized plans to post Pistone downtown.

Sources say the selection of Pistone was made with input from RAM president Vaughan.

Additionally, they say O'Shea solicited the opinions of a number of staffers who would be affected by the changes -- a process much in line with RAM's Vision, a corporate program aimed at sharpening Reuters' customer focus and tightening relations among employees (IMD, Aug. 3).

Pistone is known to many of the staff now reporting to her from her stint at Reuters Historical Information Products, sources say, when she was also based in the downtown office.

Human resource vice president Tim Kidman last month began reporting to Celia Berk, who was at the same time named vice president in charge of organizational development, responsible for Vision and broader employee-related issues (IMD, Nov. 9).

Along with Vaughan, Berk was a chief architect of the Vision program, leading some observers to speculate that future appointments at RAM could also be made in such an ostensibly consensual manner.