Nasdaq Names Leaders in Advance of Spinoff

Nasdaq’s parent, the National Assn. of Securities Dealers, on Thursday named a new management team to prepare the organization for the planned spinoff of the No. 2 U.S. stock market.

The NASD said Robert Glauber, 61, an adjunct lecturer at Harvard University, will become NASD’s chief executive Nov. 1, replacing Frank Zarb, a Wall Street veteran now at retirement age.

The organization, whose membership is made up of 5,500 brokerage firms, also named Richard Ketchum, who was NASD’s chief operating officer, as president of Nasdaq effective immediately. Ketchum, 49, replaces Alfred Berkeley, 55, who will become vice chairman of Nasdaq’s board of directors.

In other Nasdaq news:

* The NASD board proposed requiring firms to inform retail customers in writing of the risks of trading in a margin account. Firms would have to provide a “margin disclosure statement,” on paper or electronically, before or as a customer opens an account, and then annually. The vote comes amid growing concern among regulators about the purchase of stock on margin--the increasingly popular practice in which investors borrow money from a broker to buy shares.

* The market’s board approved for member comment a plan to extend limit order protections to investors who place such orders for Nasdaq securities prior to the open. From 5:40 a.m. to 6:30 a.m. Pacific time, market makers would be prohibited from executing trades for their own accounts at prices superior or equal to a customer’s limit order without providing execution of the customer’s order at the same time.

* Dissident NASD board member Alan Davidson, a small-firm advocate who was elected in the association’s first contested national balloting, resigned effective immediately. Davidson, the only board member to oppose the Nasdaq Stock Market’s planned conversion to a for-profit corporation, has repeatedly butted heads with Zarb and the other directors.