J.P. Morgan Executive Named CEO of Lobby for Securities Traders

The largest lobby for stock and bond traders yesterday chose T. Timothy Ryan Jr. as its new chief executive.

The appointment of Ryan, an investment banker, comes after a six-month search and extensive turmoil in the executive ranks of the organization called the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association, or SIFMA.

SIFMA was formed at the end of 2006 by the merger of the lobby groups that had separately represented stock and bond salesmen. Initially, SIFMA was led by the chief executives of both predecessor organizations: Marc E. Lackritz from the Securities Industry Association and Micah S. Green of the Bond Market Association.

In March 2007, Green resigned abruptly, and Lackritz became the sole chief executive. SIFMA said initially that it had decided it would do better with a single top executive. Later, it acknowledged that Green left after an internal probe uncovered loose financial procedures at the bond association. Green, a million-dollar-a-year executive, had obtained $240,000 in short-term advances over three years that the investigators said should have required board approval.

Then in July, SIFMA announced that Lackritz was retiring and it commenced a search for his replacement.

In an interview, Ryan, 62, said he plans to retire from J.P. Morgan Chase as vice chairman of investment banking for financial institutions and governments, and take over SIFMA next month. He will be based in New York.

Before joining J.P. Morgan in 1993, Ryan was the director of the Office of Thrift Supervision at the Treasury Department and also had worked at the Labor Department. Ryan said he wanted to make SIFMA a "thought leader" on all matters that deal with financial markets.