POSITION KEEPING

Weeden and Co. snagged Lawrence Laurion for its listed trading desk. Laurion, previously head trader of Jeffries and Co.'s Trading Technology Group, will also work closely with Weeden's Institutional Electronic Trading Group.

The Autex Group, a unit of Thomson, has appointed Debra Wojciechowski account executive for the Midwest and West Coast region. She will be responsible for prospecting and selling the suite of Autex services. Wojciechowski was formerly a vice president at Salomon Brothers, where she worked on designing an external connectivity strategy to integrate with the internal trading architecture and implementing FIX at Salomon.

Mark Freed has returned to Braid, after stints at Mint Communications and Citymax. Freed, who was sales and product manager to the securities industry at Braid from 1993-1995, now rejoins as business development manager. "I think Braid is now unique in being a one-stop vendor with the ability to integrate matching, reconciliation and transaction management into one solution, providing truly uninterrupted STP." Braid is a messaging middleware vendor that specializes in transaction automation and straight through processing solutions.

Island ECN Inc. has hired Cameron Dovi Smith as general counsel and Joseph Dwyer as CFO. Smith has served with the SEC's Division of Market Regulation and the Office of Compliance Inspections and Examinations. Dwyer was Salomon Smith Barney's business unit manager for short-term taxable and tax-exempt fixed income products and San Juan capital markets.