NYMEX Promotes Senior Vice President, Five Vice Presidents

The board of directors of the New York Mercantile Exchange, Inc. (NYMEX), recently promoted Ian Wall to senior vice president of technology. It also promoted five other executives: Daniel Brusstar to vice president of research; Robert Cordes to vice president of network engineering and operations; Anthony Di Benedetto, vice president of clearing; Mark Francetic to vice president of software development; and Bradford Leach to vice president of research.

Ian Wall was promoted to senior vice president of technology. Prior to joining NYMEX, he worked as a consultant for TradinGear, Inc. When the Exchange acquired TradinGear in 2003, Mr. Wall continued to work as a consultant to NYMEX until June 2004, when he was retained as its vice president of software development.

In his role as vice president, Mr. Wall managed the transition of NYMEX futures contracts to the CME Globex® electronic trading platform, the launch of the NYMEX ClearPort® Eco-system, and trading of NYMEX miNY^TM futures contracts. He has been a lead technical architect for various companies including Raytheon E-Systems, Long Island Lighting Co., Intel, and Kaiser Permanente.

Mr. Wall graduated with honors from the University of Sheffield in England with a bachelor of science degree in computer science.

Daniel Brusstar was named vice president of research. He began as a research analyst at NYMEX in April 1993 and was subsequently promoted to senior research manager, director, and senior director. Mr. Brusstar has handled all the major enhancements and modifications to the crude oil and petroleum futures contracts over the past decade, including successfully navigating upheavals in the governmental regulation of the gasoline market. He was an economist at the U.S. Trust Company prior to joining NYMEX. Mr. Brusstar recently developed the Russian export blend crude oil futures contract and has been working with the Dubai Mercantile Exchange (DME) to develop the Oman crude oil futures contract.

He earned a bachelors degree in classical languages from the University of Michigan and a masters degree in foreign service from Georgetown University.

Robert Cordes was promoted to vice president of network engineering and operations. He has been with NYMEX since 2001, first working as a consultant and then permanently as a manager of technical planning. In that position, he was part of the team that launched the internet version of the NYMEX ACCESS® electronic trading platform three days after the World Trade Center attack. Recent accomplishments at NYMEX include upgrading the trading floor's wireless technology, building the network infrastructure of the DME, and deploying a new network management and historical data reporting system.

Mr. Cordes previously worked for Exodus Communications as a lead network engineer, building and maintaining core network and business infrastructures for many Fortune 500 companies and their subsidiaries.

Anthony Di Benedetto was named vice president of clearing. He has been an Exchange employee since 1978, when he joined the COMEX Clearing Association, Inc. (CCA) While at COMEX, he oversaw the transition from a manual clearing system to a new electronic system called MASC (margin accounting system for clearing), which Mr. Di Benedetto was instrumental in developing with external consultants. Mr. Di Benedetto served as vice president of operations for CCA when COMEX merged with NYMEX in 1994.

Subsequent to the merger, he was named director of clearing for NYMEX. In his new position, he participated in the implementation of essential clearing programs, including the electronic metals delivery system, Clearing 21®, NYMEX ClearPort, the NYMEX trade management system, as well as the launching several hundred new products. He was also one of the named inventors of the eroding settlement system, which was initially designed to clear PJM electricity futures contracts.

Mark Francetic was promoted to vice president of software development. He joined NYMEX in 2001 as a senior software engineer, working on NYMEX ACCESS, the NYMEX price reporting system, and NYMEX ClearPort. After being promoted to director of software development in 2004 he was instrumental in integrating FIX technologies into the NYMEX ClearPort trading platform. He oversees the entire NYMEX messaging infrastructure and played a key role in facilitating distributed processing by applying hub and spoke solutions.

Mr. Francetic previously worked at Bear Stearns as a vice president in the information technology group, where he was responsible for engineering and administrating various telecom and back office systems. He was a co-owner of Wine Dictator Ventures, a web-based contemporary of Wine Spectator backed by Frederick Wildman. Prior to that he worked as a programmer and information systems engineer at Cobite Billing Technology.

He attended Boston College where he majored in psychology.

Bradford Leach was named vice president of research. He joined NYMEX in 1986 as a research analyst and was responsible for developing the Henry Hub natural gas futures contract. He was also instrumental in the development of electricity futures contracts, as well as research related to weather derivatives and environmental emissions markets. Mr. Leach also serves as a guest speaker at many energy and metals conferences around the world.

Mr. Leach previously served as an assistant to the director at the American Paper Institute, where he was involved with the development of policies in natural gas and electricity for the pulp and paper industry. He is a member of the NYMEX Risk Committee, Society of Competitive Intelligence Professionals, New York External Fraud Committee, and the Business Thread Awareness Council. He was listed as one of the top 100 most influential people in gas and electricity by Hart Energy Markets magazine. Last year, he was a co-author of a book on energy risk management for the utilities industry.

Mr. Leach graduated from Columbia University with a bachelors degree in political science.