Pacific Stock Exchange Taps Mann for CEO

Maurice Mann, vice chairman of Merrill Lynch’s investment banking unit and a former thrift industry regulator, on Thursday was named chairman and chief executive of the Pacific Stock Exchange.

Mann, 57, will assume his new post at an as-yet undetermined date in late January.

The appointment of Mann ends a nearly yearlong search for a replacement for Charles E. Rickershauser Jr., 58, who resigned as chairman and chief executive last March to open a West Coast office of the law firm of Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver & Jacobson.

Douglas J. Engmann, vice chairman of the exchange, has been acting chairman, and James S. Gallagher, the exchange’s president and chief operating officer, has been acting chief executive.

In tapping Mann, a prominent investment banker in the thrift industry and former president of the Federal Home Loan Bank of San Francisco, the exchange obtained an executive with wide industry connections and management experience to lead it in a period of increasing competition and change, said Herbert G. Kawahara, an executive vice president at E. F. Hutton in Los Angeles and chairman of the exchange’s search committee.

The Pacific exchange, which has trading floors in Los Angeles and San Francisco, faces intensifying competition from other equity, options and futures exchanges that are trying to cut into the Pacific’s small-trade business while the Pacific tries to gain a greater share of the large-block-trade business dominated by the New York Stock Exchange.

The Pacific must also position itself to capitalize on the increasing internationalization of the securities markets and the proliferation of new securities products.

In a telephone interview Thursday, Mann said it is “too early” for him to comment on what direction he would take the exchange or what new products it might trade. However, he did say that such areas as commodities, currencies and asset-backed securities are possibilities to be explored.

“We’ll look at everything; everything is open season,” he said.

Mann said he had no interest in reviving discussions with the NYSE about a possible merger of the two exchanges. “I believe in the concept of the regional exchange,” he said. “We’ve got to carve out our own niche.”

Mann said he will split his time between the exchange’s administrative office and main equity trading floor, both in Los Angeles, and its options trading floor in San Francisco.

As vice chairman of Merrill Lynch Capital Markets, the investment banking arm of Merrill Lynch, Mann has worked on mergers and acquisitions, financings and other activities involving banks and savings and loan associations. Mann also is chairman of a task force exploring the possible privatization of the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corp. (Freddie Mac).