Peter Bartko, the founder and former chairman and CEO of the EBS Partnership, has joined new-generation currency trading exchange Forexster as chief executive.
Bartko, who succeeds Forexster founder and chairman Arman Glodjo as CEO, will also have a seat on the board as a director of the Bermuda-based start-up.
Taking its cue from the Naspter song-swapping system, Forexster's patent-pending trading application supports direct order matching and "request-for-quote" services between participants. All users can trade anonymously with all credit-providing financial institutions and their clients, effectively buying in and out of currency pairs while preserving existing credit relationships. The company has so far recruited Bear Stearns and SEB to trade on the network.
Bartko, a former founder of risk reduction initiative FXNET and a veteran Chemical bank employee, was the driving force behind the founding of the EBS Partnership in 1990 by a consortium of 12 top foreign exchange banks and a Japanese brokerage. He retired from this position in December 2001, after 11 years as chairman and CEO.
Glodjo says he and Bartko "share similar views on the inevitability of evolution in the foreign exchange markets towards our model".