Comex President Resigns

The Commodity Exchange in New York announced that its president and chief executive, Arnold Staloff, is resigning resign effective May 1 after only nine months on the job.

The Comex said only that Staloff was leaving to pursue other business opportunities. But published reports said he resigned under pressure amid strained relationships with the Comex’s trader leadership, including chairman Martin Greenberg.

Staloff could not be reached for comment. A successor was not named.

Staloff won a reputation as an innovator of financial products when he was a senior officer of the Philadelphia Stock Exchange and president of the Philadelphia Board of Trade.

But he apparently encountered conflict at the Comex where members, mainly trading houses and individual traders, have a reputation for being strong-willed and who effectively run the exchange.

The Comex is the nation’s major gold, silver and copper futures exchange, but it is a distant fourth in size behind the Chicago Board of Trade, Chicago Mercantile Exchange and New York Mercantile Exchange.

Trading volume at the exchange has been sluggish, and the Comex has had trouble developing innovative futures products to compete with the big Chicago exchanges.

Officials of the Comex and New York Merc have been negotiating a merger of the two exchanges. A proposal is expected to completed within a couple of weeks. It would then be presented to the boards of the two exchanges.