Most derivatives software gurus spent their early adulthood slaving away at prominent Eastern universities in pursuit of fancy degrees.

Farid Naib’s path was a bit more circuitous. In 1976, at the age of 16, the future president of FNX Software founded a concert lighting company called Spectrum Light in Atlanta. “Like probably everyone else, I got into the business to meet girls,” he says. “The late 1970s was a great time. Record companies were supporting new artists, and there was a lot of great music.”

Naib began soliciting business from bands touring the South, and soon found himself manning the lights for a variety of acts, including B.B. King, Greg Almond, The Police and The Sex Pistols. “The Sex Pistols show wasn’t much fun,” he recalls. “It was really loud, and their lighting requirements were minimal. It wasn’t what we were used to down in the South.”

Naib admits his earliest business experiences were more character-building than revenue-building. “The jobs didn’t pay very well,” he says. “We’d load up a truck with two or three tons of gear and drive six or eight hours from Atlanta to New Orleans, do a show, drive back, and get paid maybe $1,500. But we had fun.”

In 1980, he learned a business lesson that would serve him well later in life. At the time, he had two lighting rigs, and had sent them both out on the road—one with B.B. King, and the other with a band called Sea Level. Then, when rock band Kansas asked him to light a show, he agreed, even though he didn’t have any equipment. “I tried to put together a third rig with makeshift gear, borrowing stuff from other companies, but all three shows were disastrous,” he said. “We put so many lights on the lighting truss for the Kansas show that the truss actually bent, and the dimmer board never showed up at the Sea Level show. It taught me not to overcommit.”

Naib remained at the helm of Spectrum until 1982, when he sold the business and went off to study finance at Wharton. After graduating with an MBA in 1984, Naib spent a few years as a consultant in London and then left to found his first software company, FX Systems. “I saw the first version of Devon, which sold for $40,000, and I thought I could do a better job,” he recalls.

Naib hasn’t forsaken his Rock & Roll past. A few years ago, he hired his former shop manager at Spectrum Light, who had since received an MBA at MIT. “He’s a bright, energetic fellow,” says Naib. His taste in music probably didn’t hurt.

Past Lives Wanted! Do you have an exotic secret past waiting to be revealed? Tell us about your LBD (life before derivatives), and we’ll publish your story in future issues. Contact hunter@derivativesstrategy.com.

Joseph Jett, the infamous trader turned tell-all scribe, is back in hot water. After being fined by the SEC and banned from the securities industry for booking $350 million in phantom profits at Kidder Peabody in 1994, Jett’s now being sued for $10 million in damages by his former boss, Ed Cerullo, for libel.

Jett’s incendiary book Black and White on Wall Street blames his huge trading loss on the willful mismanagement of his Kidder Peabody bosses—especially Cerullo, whose broader strategy, writes Jett, involved seizing control of Kidder from parent company General Electric.

The self-prolaimed “big swinging dick” also asserts that Kidder’s corporate culture was rife with racism, a charge that Cerullo vigorously denies. Cerullo’s suit was filed in late August in New York State Supreme Court, and also names HarperCollins Publishing, which now owns Jett’s original publisher, William Morrow.

• Stacy Carey, former staff director of the House Agriculture Committee’s subcommittee on risk management, research and specialty crops, has joined the International Swaps and Derivatives Association as director of U.S. regulatory policy.
• SOPHIS has announced the appointment of Olivier Cohen as vice president of client services. He had been an internal auditor for market activity at Societe Generale.
• Matt Mandalinci, former president of BancWare Inc., an operating unit of SunGard Data Systems, has been named senior vice president of distribution for the Americas and Asia-Pacific at Infinity, a SunGard company.
• Sakura Dellsher Inc. has promoted Michael Richard to vice president of natural gas physical and derivatives products. He joined the SDI Energy Group in 1998.
• Stanley Choung, a former equity derivatives trader and vice president in Morgan Stanley Dean Witter’s institutional equity division, has joined software vendor Savvysoft as director of product development.
• Prebon Energy, a subsidiary of Prebon Yamane, has hired 12 people from the energy division of Intercapital Money Brokers, which ceased operations in July. Among them: Lee Taylor, former vice president at Icap, has been named senior vice president; Scott Lombino has been named vice president and manager of the midcontinent power desk; and Paul Pavlini has been named vice president and manager of the PJM/NEPOOL power desk.
• Baxter Gillette has joined AmerenEnergy as vice president of risk management. He had worked on energy risk management programs at PricewaterhouseCoopers.
• PricewaterhouseCoopers has announced a consulting relationship with Richard Sandor, chairman and CEO of Environmental Financial Products LLC. He will serve as a senior adviser to the organization and its clients on issues in the environmental and capital markets.
• Bennett Degen, former assistant vice president for risk management and product control in the global derivatives trading group at Westdeutsche Landesbank, has been appointed director of risk management at Asset Alliance Corp.
• Garry Popofsky, former head of sales and marketing for the North America region at NatWest Global Financial Markets, has been promoted to managing director and head of sales for the North American region.
• State Street Corp. has promoted Teruaki Shibata from vice president of marketing for global custody to vice president and head of marketing for the firm’s global securities lending business in Tokyo.
• Howard Mason, a former managing director in the structured products area at Deutsche Bank, has been named technology director at Altvest Inc.
• The London Clearing House has elected four new member shareholder representatives to its board. They are Richard Berliand, a managing director at JP Morgan Securities Ltd.; Vivian Davies, CEO at Brandeis Ltd.; Catherine Fitzmaurice, a managing director in the European fixed-income division at Salomon Brothers International; and David Pearse, a European managing director at Cargill Investor Services Ltd. Arnaud Chupin, a managing director at Carr Futures Inc., was re-elected for a second term on the board.

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