As part of a minor restructuring of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange's development trading groups, Kevin Kometer, formerly director of advanced technology, was promoted to managing director, trading execution systems. The CME previously had three development groups - one for front-end systems development, a second that focused on quality management and architecture, and a third that handled the development of the CME's matching engines. Kometer was in charge of both the front-end electronic trading systems and quality management groups.

"Now, we're bringing together these groups with the matching engine development group," Kometer explains. "Together, we'll be more effective in meeting the requirements of the business."

Developing the CME's electronic options trading system will top Kometer's priority list. "This year with options, we'll be working on user-defined spreads," he notes. The biggest challenges in developing options systems are market data capacity issues, Kometer adds, noting that the CME is helping clients deal with the significant increase in volume of quotes. Kometer also will spend much of his time working with other industry groups, such as FIX Protocol Limited, "to define and design a new market data format that will reduce the pain associated with market data," he says.