Trading Desk: News Briefs October 2000

Posted: 10/2000

News Briefs

*TFS Energy LLC, the result of the recent merger between Tradition Financial Services Inc.
(www.tfsbrokers.com) and the former New York energy group of Sakura Dellsher Inc., has announced the formation of TFS Telecom, a division of TFS Energy
LLC, to provide operating telephone company (OTC) bandwidth brokerage services and risk management consulting.

TFS Telecom will be manned by Ron Banszek, formerly manager of SDI Bandwidth and a veteran of the United States securities and bond markets. Elena Curtis, former director of global business development for AT&T Corp. in Africa, Europe and the Middle East. Darren Jacobs, who has been with TFS for 12 years as a broker of currency and energy derivatives in U.S. and Japanese markets.

*In mid-August, RateXchange Corp.
(www.ratexchange.com) and Amerex Bandwidth Ltd.
(www.amerexbandwidth.com) formed a strategic alliance in which Amerex OTC brokers will assist with capacity trades through RateXchange’s neutral electronic trading system.

The deal is the second in which an OTC broker has brought its matchmaking skills to online capacity trading with the intent to eliminate bids and offers floating unanswered in cyberspace.

Chapel Hill Broadband
(www.chbroadband.com) announced in July such a deal with bandwidth.com
(www.bandwidth.com). The exclusive arrangement expands bandwidth.com from a retail capacity marketplace answering requests for quotations
(RFQs) from enterprises to pairing carriers seeking and selling bandwidth, dark fiber and collocation.

* OTC broker Chapel Hill Broadband has established a London-based European division, Chapel Hill Broadband Europe
(www.chbroadband.co.uk), to facilitate capacity trades primarily for American buyers who are looking to build out European networks. Henry
Kaestner, co-founder of Chapel Hill Broadband and founder of energy brokerage Chapel Hill Brokers, will lead the new division. Andrew Smith, formerly with MCI WorldCom (now WorldCom Inc.,
www.wcom.com), has been tapped to run the London office.

The broker expects to leverage its existing relationships with U.S.-based carriers and financial institutions as well as its exclusive relationship with Bandwidth.com to contribute to its European deal flow.

* IP telephony provider deltathree Inc. (www.deltathree.com) has upgraded its interconnection to the Central Marketplace run by AIG Telecommunications LLC (AIGT,
www.aigtele.com) by installing a DS-3. deltathree has been trading minutes with AIGT since spring 2000, and has found efficiencies in the process, according to Jerry Norton, vice president of site development for
deltathree. “The online platform–AIG TeleTrader–empowers use with true real-time transaction capability. Buy and sell orders are provisioned promptly, and AIG Telecom’s front office systems permit us to get priced matches catering to our specific buying and selling requirements,” he says. “Working with AIG Telecom has also eliminated the burden an cost attached to settlement issues.”