Both the private client and institutional client divisions will provide multiple service offerings, each tailored to specific client segments and their respective investing and trading preferences.

Joe Moglia, appointed from Merrill Lynch four months ago as Ameritrade's chief executive officer, explains: "Through this reorganisation, we will maximise our existing assets by deploying every Ameritrade employee to either directly serve clients or directly support someone who does. We are consolidating a myriad of subsidiaries, products and resources into one team, one brand with two business units."

He did not say whether the changes would lead to any substantial cost savings.

Under the restructuring, Moglia will oversee a newly created executive management team consisting of Pete Ricketts (sone of Ameritrade founder Joe Ricketts) and Vince Passione, heads of the private client and institutional client divisions, respectively; chief financial officer Randy MacDonald; chief strategy officer Phylis Esposito; chief administrative officer Kurt Halvorson; general counsel Ellen Koplow; and co-chief information officers Mok Choe and Raymond Dury. Moglia will continue to report to founder and chairman Joe Ricketts.

In the coming months, Ameritrade says it will roll out tiered levels of products and services for private client trading, discriminating between active investors, those requiring no-frills deal execution, those who require more personal service, and users of its fee-free trading facility.

The reshuffle marks the departure of CIO Jim Ditmore, who has quit the group. Co-chief information officers Mok Choe and Raymond Dury will lead an expanded Ameritrade technology group, which brings together all of the company's technology functions. Choe was hired in 1999 as vice president of Ameritrade's application development group from the Property and Casualty Company of Nationwide Insurance Enterprises. Also in 1999, Dury joined Ameritrade subsidiary OnMoney as senior vice president of operations from Citigroup.