Bill Falloon, a reporter who has covered the derivatives market since its inception, has left journalism for book publishing. Falloon recently became a senior editor at John Wiley & Sons, where he is developing a new line of risk management, finance and investment books.

Falloon's involvement in the derivatives business dates back to February 1984, when he joined Intermarket magazine. "It was the first magazine that looked at the risk-transfer markets from an institutional perspective,” says Falloon. The hot topic at the time was portfolio insurance, and Falloon reported on both the claims of the portfolio insurers and the skeptics who predicted it would lead to a market collapse.

After Intermarket folded in 1989, he became the editor of the short-lived Corporate Risk Management, another publication before its time, eventually joining Risk in 1991. A few years later, he took time off to write Market Maker: A Sesquecentennial Look at the Chicago Board of Trade, an official history of the exchange, and Charlie D: The Story of the Legendary Bond Trader (Wiley).

Toward the end of the decade, however, Falloon dabbled in book publishing with Risk and found working with authors more enjoyable than the reporter's daily grind. "I found that the big stories, the fun ones, were something that didn't happen every month,” he says. "In a book you can focus on history and the future. I found that the whole dynamic of the creation of these markets was more interesting than reporting on them monthly. Shelf life, I guess, started to matter.”

His latest projects include books on real options, risk budgeting, and self-directed risk management for individual investors. "I'm talking to all the people I've met in the markets over the past 16 years and trying to get the most deserving ones to write books,” he explains. Writers who want to see their name on a spine should e-mail him at: bfalloon@wiley.com.

• Michael Aiken, former publisher of Derivatives Strategy, has been named senior vice president at New York- and Moscow-based EGAR Technology, a financial software, consulting, e-business and incubation firm.
• OpenLink has promoted Kevin Hesselbirg from CFO to COO.
• Joseph Rizzello has joined TFM Investment Group as managing director of marketing, strategy and business development. He had been a principal at Vanguard Broker-Dealer Services.
• Susquehanna Partners has named Debra Dahn to head its options best-execution facility. She had been a senior vice president at McDonald Investments.
• Timothy Doyle, former managing director of the loan portfolio group for CIBC Oppenheimer, has been appointed senior vice president of structuring and portfolio management in the specialized industries group at Summit Bank.
• SunGard Business Integration has appointed Thierry Krief sales director of its new office in Paris. He previously held a similar position at Tibco Finance Technology.
• Brad McKinnon, former managing director and head of European marketing for fixed-income derivatives at Bear Stearns, has been named senior marketer at creditex.
• StructuredMarkets Inc.'s new board of advisers, includes Yannis Doganis, a founding partner at Usheron Ventures; Alphonse Fletcher Jr., chairman and CEO of Fletcher Asset Management; Herbert Hughes, director of risk management at hedge fund BBT; and Mark Rubinstein, a professor in the Haas School of Business at the University of California at Berkeley.
• David Atkinson has joined Bank of America as head of European equity research. He was a co-founder of Stamford Partners.
• TreasuryConnect has hired Bradford Gee, former assistant vice president and assistant treasurer at Federal Home Loan Bank in San Francisco, as senior vice president for business development. Karen Phillips, former vice president and manager of weather derivatives at Prebon Yamane, has been named vice president for marketing.
• Lehman Brothers has promoted Jonathan Coffin to global head of the counterparty credit risk management group. The firm has also named Robin Mezel, former director of high-yield research at Deutsche Bank, executive director of its high-yield research team.
• Keith Fell has been named senior vice president and North American head of global sales and derivatives marketing at Dresdner Kleinwort Benson N.A. He had been a managing director at Merrill Lynch.
• The International Securities Exchange has promoted Paul Bennett to senior vice president for market operations from vice president and project director.
• Robert Fiedler, former head of methodology and policy for treasury and liquidity risk at Deutsche Bank, has been appointed head of Algorithmics' team of liquidity risk experts, based in Frankfurt.
• NetRisk has hired Penny Cagan as head of research and Lisa Royan as a research associate. Both came from OperationalRisk.com, Cagan as chief research officer and Royan as a research analyst.

Errata

Our entry for Summit Systems in our June Guide To Derivatives Technology was incomplete due to technical problems associated with our e-mail survey.

Summit is an integrated trading, operations and risk management system that permits front-to-back straight-through processing of all products within four primary business areas:
Fixed-income: bonds, repos and emerging-market debt;
Treasury: loans and deposits, money-market securities and foreign exchange;
Derivatives: interest rate, bonds, currency, equity, commodity and credit;
Commercial lending: syndicated and bilateral loans.

Applications allow users to price and capture transactions, monitor positions and P&L in real time, and measure portfolio sensitivities. Market and trade data are maintained through real-time feeds and automatic updates. Back-office support offers a common set of tools across all products in confirmations, settlements of cash and securities; and accounting.

For a corrected version of the survey, please see www.derivativesstrategy.com/technology/sophis.