Last year Citibank announced it would break up its geographically centered operations into groups organized by product units. The move necessitated a considerable bit of personnel shuffling. In February the bank announced that Junaid Rubbani, former head of capital markets for North America, was appointed head of the bank's derivatives efforts in developed markets such as North America, Europe and Japan. He replaces Dipak Rastogi, who was named head of the company's cross-border finance group.

Rubbani was not only present at the creation of the swap market, he was one of the earliest and biggest end-users. After early stints in Citi's Dubai and Bahrain treasuries, he became treasurer of Citibank Canada in 1981 and started using interest rate swaps to hedge the bank's $3 billion funding book in 1982. He went on to head the bank's investment banking activities in Canada, Eastern Europe and Latin America.

Rubbani says Citi's reorganization will have no effect on its derivatives strategy. "In conception the reorganization is very simple, but its ramifications are very dramatic," he explains. "It puts less emphasis on geography and more emphasis on clients and products."

Lisa Polsky, formerly derivatives guru in residence at Bankers Trust Investment Management, has jumped to Morgan Stanley, where she will become chief derivatives strategist and head of new product development for equity derivatives. Polsky, who was named managing director in the newly created position, will report to Vikram Pandit, managing director and head of global equity derivatives.

In 1994 Polsky moved from the sell-side at Bankers Trust to join Bankers Trust Investment Management, where she developed a variety of innovative equity and fixed income investments. In January, however, she reportedly found herself a minister without portfolio when the firm integrated its risk management functions into its traditional asset management categories.

She started her career in the late 1970s managing FX risk at General Electric, and joined Citibank in 1980. At Citi she was one of the first traders to use computers, and spent her early years in front of a Radio Shack TRS80, working with currency option models copied from financial journals. By 1989 she was responsible for all of Citi's derivatives books as well as research and marketing.

She moved to Bankers Trust to run the equity derivatives desk in 1990. By November 1991 she was co-head of trading at BT, responsible for the bank's books in equities, interest rates and mortgage derivatives.

Since joining the buy-side, Polsky has specialized in adapting high-tech strategies usually found on proprietary trading desks for institutional investors.

High-tech models from your data vendor? Gabriel Bousbib wants to sell you some.

In 1989 Gabriel Bousbib had the foresight to start MYCA, a company devoted to building interest rate risk management analytics. Two years later he lacked the foresight to hang onto it: he and his partners sold the company to INSSINC (Investment Support Systems Inc.) "I shouldn't have sold MYCA so soon," he acknowledges a little wistfully. "If only I'd known about the risk management boom of the 1990s..."

Bousbib, who went on to become a successful risk management consultant, is now getting another chance at building an empire. Last month Reuters America announced it was hiring Bousbib to head an independent risk management unit within the company.

The group plans to help give clients independent risk valuations, systems recommendations and other services usually offered by accounting and consulting firms. "It was very important to me that the risk management unit be independent of Reuters as a whole," explains Bousbib. "While we definitely work closely with other departments, I wanted to be sure that risk management had its own staff, including its own sales force, with solid, specific risk management experience."

While Reuters is an undisputed data powerhouse, its front-end derivatives analytics are something short of state of the art. There are plenty of skeptics, moreover, who wonder whether the big data vendors can ever catch up with the specialized vendors of derivatives analytics.

Reuters, however, seems busy trying to make up for lost ground. It recently acquired Sailfish, a company that specializes in high-end middle-office risk management systems. Other products include Reuters Kondor+, an integrated front-to-back office system for high-volume operations, and Deal Manager, an inexpensive deal capture and risk reporting system for smaller, low-volume dealers. Although all are all compatible with Reuters' standard electronic trading and deal capture systems, Bousbib says he has the freedom to recommend a non-Reuters product if he thinks it will better meet a client's needs.

Among the congressional critics of derivatives, there have been few to equal Rep. Jim Leach, chairman of the House Banking Committee. His vows to introduce legislation that would curb certain derivatives practices has hung over the industry like a sword of Damocles. Well, last month that threat was removed. Or was it?

Last January at a speech to the Government Finance Officers' Association, Leach gave himself credit as a prime mover in the fight for better derivatives use and regulation. Afterward he told the press that derivatives are "substantially less of a front burner issue." Industry lobbyists were quick to pat themselves on the back and breathe a collective sigh of relief. "Score one for the multi-trillion-dollar derivatives market," opined The Wall Street Journal on February 5, adding, "it is heartening that it"-the threat of a new derivatives law-" has been sidelined."

Those sighs of relief were premature. Sensing that he may have lost some of the spin control on this issue, Leach immediately set out to correct any impression that he was holstering his gun. "The congressman still has concerns, especially about accounting and disclosure issues and regulatory arbitrage," says House Banking Committee staffer Terry Miller. "Anybody who interpreted his words as saying that there will be no new laws coming from Congress is making a mistake. People should be made aware that strong congressional interest is continuing. The congressman may amend the proposed bill before mark up, but he has not lost interest in this topic."

Time will tell if this is cosmetic backpedaling or if Jim Leach could be a spoilsport again.

• Two prominent derivatives dealers have jumped to buy-side posts at BEA Associates. Andrew Parker, a former principal in the international derivatives group at Morgan Stanley, became a SVP and portfolio manager specializing in product development. Robert Justich, formerly of the corporate bond proprietary trading group at Merrill Lynch, joined BEA's fixed-income group as a SVP and portfolio manager specializing in investment grade corporate bonds and global fixed-income portfolios.
• Two former executives have returned to the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. T. Eric Kilcollin is becoming EVP for business development. He was most recently managing director in the investment services group at BZW Barclays Global Investors. Kenneth R. Cone will return as EVP of research and strategic planning. Cone was formerly vice president of Lexecon, an economics consulting firm specializing in securities and anti-trust issues.
• Two ranking software marketers have also jumped firms. Ellen O'Dwyer, formerly US marketing director at Lombard Systems, has joined Infinity. Bettina Slusar, former director of sales for Tech Hackers, has joined Rennaisance Software's marketing group.
• Summit Systems has appointed Christopher Neve as director of the company's newly formed business development group. He is a former managing director and head of financial derivatives trading at ING Capital Markets in New York.