With Liberty Merger Set, EJV Initiates Reorg; Dexter Senft Leaves

With the emergence of a plan to bring the EJV Partners L.P. under the management control of a new Liberty Brokerage Inc. subsidiary (IMT, July 9), the EJV has begun an internal management restructuring. Thus far, the reorganization includes the repositioning of several top executives and the establishment of a list of 14 staff members slated to be laid off.

While EJV officials decline to comment, sources say that the full extent of the internal reorganization will not be known until nearer the end of the summer.

As this goes on, the voluntary exodus of EJV staff continues--most notably with the departure of fixed-income analytic expert Dexter Senft for Lehman Brothers Inc.'s bond research group. Senft had been the EJV's product development head.

In the wake of Senft's departure, EJV Brokerage Inc. president Dick MacWilliams will now oversee sales, marketing and product development. MacWilliams, whose oversight also previously included managing the vendor's pricing and valuation services, will find himself increasingly idle on the EJV Brokerage front.

The EJV recently decided to withdraw its offer to sell the electronic cash Treasury trading system to the Chicago Board of Trade and to shut it down. The EJV had maintained the little-used system for the 18 months during which the CBOT deal awaited regulatory approval (Trading Systems Technology, July 13).

Meanwhile, following the departure of Randy Hoyle, the role of head of operations will now fall to Jay Spencer, who had previously been in charge of technology and development, as well as partner relations. Chief financial officer Jim Miceli retains his post.

Reporting to MacWilliams under the new structure will be marketing and product design head David Gertler. He had previously managed the EJV's pre-sales area, arranging demonstrations and the like. Gertler, who hails from Salomon Brothers Inc., earlier worked on adapting that firm's Yield Book as a UniVu component. The EJV later abandoned Yield Book, deciding that its two-page format was too restrictive.

Also reporting to MacWilliams now will be Larry Scott, covering quality assurance, customer service and content. Scott was previously a part-time consultant to the EJV who worked on UniVu's ticket-writing facility.

Also following word of the solidification of the deal with Liberty, sources say that the EJV issued a list of 14 staff members who had been deemed "temporary." A number of these individuals were laid off immediately, sources say. Still others were held over through August, based on determinations that their services were still required--especially to guide the impending launch of UniVu's release 3.0.

Two weeks ago, after months of talks, interdealer Treasury broker Liberty and the EJV finally came to terms. In the resulting agreement, Liberty became a minority partner in the EJV, and positioned itself to assume managerial control over it.

Following the cutting of the deal--which sources say still awaits final approval by the EJV partners--Bruce Peterson left his post as the vendor's president. When all the dust settles, Liberty president Tom Wendel will become CEO of the new EJV and Liberty will also set up a separate holding company to oversee its information delivery ventures--including the EJV and Liberty's Market Vision Corp. subsidiary.

The new company's officers will include Wendel, Market Vision president Bill Adiletta and new hire Paul Cooper, who left his post as managing director of Knight-Ridder Financial Americas in May (Inside Market Data, May 24).