Salomon Hires Montgomery Processing Analyst

Transaction processing analyst Richard K. Weingarten has left Montgomery Securities Inc. to join Salomon Brothers Inc.

Mr. Weingarten, 35, switched to the New York-based firm last week. He will be a director, following many of the companies he did before.

They include the market leaders First Data Corp., First USA Paymentech Inc., National Data Corp., National Processing Inc., and Nova Information Systems Inc., among others.

"I have always had a focus on technology-based companies," Mr. Weingarten said in an interview. "I discovered this area before it was an area."

Mr. Weingarten worked for Montgomery Securities for four years as a managing director, developing a reputation as one of the leading analysts of the booming transaction processing industry.

Moshe Orenbuch, an analyst for Sanford C. Bernstein & Co., said Mr. Weingarten wrote about First Data Corp. long before it was spun off from American Express in 1992.

"He had done that work years before there was an industry classification for payment processors," Mr. Orenbuch said.

Mr. Weingarten graduated from the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School in 1983 with a B.S. in economics. He received an M.B.A. from Northwestern University in 1986.

Upon graduation, he worked for Galileo Distribution Systems, then a division of United Airlines, which focused on computerized reservations.

He then joined Sanford C. Bernstein where, he noted, he learned about financial services. He later worked for Mabon Securities, where he said he was first able to combine his expertise in technology and the financial services industry.

"In the companies I follow, you need to understand both," he said.

Mr. Weingarten said the needs of the companies he follows have expanded from initial public offerings, to mergers and acquisitions and offering fixed income, or debt products.

Edward Grzedzinski, chief executive officer, Nova Information Systems, said Mr. Weingarten "is in the lead for research" on the transaction processors. "He's very thorough and bores in on the key details."

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