Quick to Step Down from BofA Unit

Quick Exits
BofA's Exchange Trading Chief To Move Into Different Role
In another sign that an era on Wall Street is ending, Christopher Quick has left his role as chief executive of Banc of America Specialist and will focus on developing business contacts with institutions and wealthy individuals for the bank's investment management group.

A spokesman confirmed the move Thursday, saying it was effective immediately. Joseph DiPrisco, who has been chief operating officer of the unit, will take over as CEO of the specialists division. Quick will stay on as chairman.

Quick, whose father was the founder of the brokerage Quick & Reilly, has spent his entire 27-year career in the specialist business, coming up through the ranks of the family business. The family was a fixture of the markets in the days before public ownership. Quick is a former member of the New York Stock Exchange board of directors. His brother, Peter, was president of the American Stock Exchange until stepping down in the spring of last year.

Specialists are assigned to make markets in specific stocks. Banc of America Specialist is one of the largest firms of its kind, representing more than 400 listed companies on the New York Stock Exchange, including General Motors (nyse: GM - news - people ), General Electric (nyse: GE - news - people ), JPMorgan Chase (nyse: JPM - news - people ), Wal-Mart Stores (nyse: WMT - news - people ) and Royal Dutch Shell (nyse: RDSA - news - people ).
Banc of America Specialist is the amalgam of several mergers, including Bank of America's (nyse: BAC - news - people ) purchase of FleetBoston Financial in 2004, which brought it Fleet Specialist. Fleet bought Quick & Reilly in 1998.

In the 1990s, several Wall Street banks looked to get bigger in the specialist business. Goldman Sachs Group (nyse: GS - news - people ), for example, bought Spear Leeds Kellogg in 2000, getting not only a big floor-based trading business but, perhaps more important, an electronic trading operation.

But lately the specialist business has been hammered by scandal and threatened with extinction by changes in the way NYSE Group (nyse: NYX - news - people ), the parent of the Big Board, operates.

Last year, federal prosecutors slapped indictments on 15 specialists for alleged securities fraud. Four of them were formerly of Fleet Specialist, and one of those individuals, David Finnerty, is set to go on trial this week. Finnerty was the specialist assigned to make markets in General Electric. He has pleaded not guilty.

NYSE is moving to a more electronic-based trading model in which the most actively traded stocks, such as the Dow components, would be handled by computer most of the time instead of by a specialist standing at his post on the floor of the exchange.

Banc of America, along with its chief rivals Goldman Sachs, Van Der Moolen, Bear Stearns (nyse: BSC - news - people ) and LaBranche, stands to lose revenues under this new model.
A spokesman for the bank said Quick's move was not related to any investigation but was a decision by Quick to explore new opportunities. The move was first reported by The Wall Street Journal on its Web site Thursday morning.

Quick takes on the title of business development executive and will work with institutions and wealthy individuals, reporting to Brian Moynihan, president of Bank of America's wealth and investment management division.