Online brokerage/bank E*Trade Group has named R. Jarrett
Lilien as president and chief operating officer, replacing Mitchell Caplan,
who left those positions to take over as CEO in January of 2003.
The Menlo Park, Calif.-based company also named Louis Klobuchar as chief
brokerage officer and president of the company’s E*TRADE Securities
division.
Lilien, 41, is expected to handle management responsibility for
all the company’s divisions. The company recently mapped out for analysts
its operating plans for 2003, amid expectations that revenues would be down
about 20 percent this quarter.
Prior to his appointment as president and COO, Lilien was an E*Trade
managing director in the company’s Asia-Pacific and Latin America divisions.
He joined the company in August 1999 after E*TRADE Group’s purchase of TIR
Holdings, an investment concern that he helped to found. The division later
became known as E*TRADE Institutional Securities.
The 45-year-old Klobuchar joined the E*TRADE Group in 2001 after the
E*Trade acquired Dempsey & Company, a privately-held market making security
firm, where he was CEO. Prior to joining Dempsey, Klobuchar was executive
vice president at the Chicago Stock Exchange.
As part of the announcement, company officials said Klobuchar would
continue leading the development of a lower and more simplified commission
rate for the brokerage side of the house. In addition, he is expected to
continue expanding the company’s recently-launched “Power of 9” marketing
initiative that offers active traders a flat rate of $9.99 per stock trade,
and a 9-second trade-execution guarantee on qualified stock trades.
The appointments are part of a shuffle among senior management at the
brokerage that followed the abrupt departure of the company’s founder and
CEO, Christos Cotsakos in January.
After the revelation that the founder took home an $80 million pay
package in 2001, at a time when the company’s stock price was sliding amid
turmoil in financial markets, Cotsakos agreed to give back $21 million the
following May.
