SCROLLING NEWS

Will Shearson Lehman Brothers Inc. and Smith Barney Harris Upham & Co. merge back-office processing groups? Word has it that the two are holding talks, following massive layoffs in Shearson's securities processing division earlier this fall. Smith Barney too has trimmed enough over the past year to be fit for a consolidation. Stay tuned.

ADP has hired two former Quotron regional sales heads, Steve Gillin and Mike Lambke. But not without Quotron's firing off missals reminding the two of nondisclosure agreements they signed as Quotron employees. Lambke is directing ADP's Chicago-based sales efforts, while Gillin has been engaged on a consulting basis. Both were let go by Quotron earlier this year as part of the vendor's head count reductions (IMD, May 11).

Rick Braddock -- Quotron's point man at Citicorp -- last week stepped down from his posts as president and director of Citicorp and Citibank. Braddock had been charged with oversight of Quotron -- an honor that will be assumed "collectively" by all five remaining members of Citi's top management team, according to a Citi spokesperson. While Braddock's departure may have little impact on operations at Quotron, sources point to PaineWebber Inc. president Paul Guenther's personal relationship with Braddock as one benefit that Quotron might miss.

Still kicking all the same, Quotron has done a deal with Knight-Ridder to begin carrying Knight-Ridder's news on the F/X Trader foreign exchange conversational trading system in early 1993.

Ouch. Quotron over the past three weeks has cut some 25 percent of its F/X Trader development, sales and operation staff in London and another 20 percent in the U.S., according to sources. A Quotron spokesperson maintains that the cuts affect only six percent of the vendor's entire foreign exchange product staff.

The Commodities Exchange Center (CEC) has lost its long-time director of computers and technology services, Farhad Froozan. Froozan, who helped father the ICT specification embraced by all commodity exchanges but the CEC members, was replaced by Dan Capozello.

More shuffles could come, as two CEC members have proposed to deliver their data on a separate quote feed. Nine months after CEC member New York Mercantile Exchange (NYMEX) was sighted looking into the costs of a separate ticker for its data (IMD, Feb. 17), the Coffee, Sugar & Cocoa Exchange (CSCE) and the Commodity Exchange (Comex) are proposing a pre-emptive strike, developing their own data feed. It seems that NYMEX generates more than half of the data the feed distributes, but receives a considerably smaller portion of the revenues. The CEC's two other members -- New York Futures Exchange (NYFE) and the Cotton Exchange -- would likely put their market data in the CSCE/Comex basket. It's unclear whether Froozan's departure was related.

Dow Jones' information services group, which includes Dow Jones/Telerate, reported flat operating income for the third quarter. Revenue rose eight percent to $203.5 million. The result compared with a 23 percent increase in operating income corporationwide on a seven percent gain in revenue.