Baltimore Exec May Get Top Nasdaq Post

Alfred Berkeley, a top executive at the Baltimore investment firm Alex Brown & Sons, is the leading contender to become president of the Nasdaq Stock Market, sources said.

Berkeley is not the only candidate and his selection is not definite. But the Alex Brown managing director has emerged as the front-runner, the source said Monday, speaking on condition he not be identified.

Berkeley, who heads Alex Brown’s investment technology group, didn’t return a telephone call seeking comment. Nasdaq spokesman Marc Beauchamp declined comment. The newsletter Securities Week first reported this week that Berkeley was a leading contender.

The appointment of the Nasdaq president is the last major personnel decision in the restructuring of Nasdaq and its parent, the National Assn. of Securities Dealers Inc. Former U.S. Sen. Warren Rudman (R-N.H.) released a report last fall that called for separating Nasdaq, the nation’s second-largest stock market, from the NASD’s regulatory responsibilities, which include licensing of the nation’s 500,000 stock brokers.

Mary Schapiro, former chairwoman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, was picked in January to head the group’s new regulatory arm, called NASD Regulation Inc.

The Rudman report came after the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Department of Justice opened investigations in 1994 of allegations that Nasdaq dealers were engaged in a form of price fixing that increased trading costs for individual investors. Major Nasdaq dealers strongly deny the allegations.