Short Interests: Schwab CEO wants to spice things up

Cost-cutting at Charles Schwab & Co. Inc. could be seasoned with curry if CEO David S. Pottruck has anything to say about it.

“I’d love to put some of my call centers into India,” Mr. Pottruck said during a question-and-answer session at the Washington-based Investment Counsel Association of America’s national conference in San Francisco this month.

“[People in that labor pool] are smart,” he said. “They speak good English, and they cost a quarter of what they do over here.”

Schwab has already farmed out some of its software programming work to India, but moving call-center personnel there from places such as Arizona is a different matter.

“It falls into the category of possible things we’re thinking about,” says Schwab spokesman Glen Mathison. “There’s a number of things that would have to be thought through.”

Try, try again

Doing what it can to assist military personnel and their families, the Financial Planning Association, based in Atlanta and Denver, is trying to organize educational seminars and classes for them.

The professional association is meeting this month with the National Military Family Association Inc. of Alexandria, Va., and other groups to make contacts to facilitate the sessions, an FPA spokeswoman says.

The FPA opted for that approach after initial plans by some local chapters to offer pro-bono consultations directly to military families appeared unfeasible (InvestmentNews, April 7).

In addition, the FPA has created a web page, fpanet.org/public/military.cfm, featuring information for military families on managing finances during wartime. Also, through its “Ask a CFP Professional” e-mail service, the association is encouraging military families to ask planners about any financial issues that concern them.

Covering the field

The Archipelago Exchange now offers a complete package of publicly traded U.S. companies.

Last week, Archipelago of Chicago stated that it had finished moving the trading of Nasdaq stocks from its electronic communications network to its electronic stock exchange.

The exchange now trades all American Stock Exchange, Nasdaq, New York Stock Exchange and Pacific Exchange stocks. The ECN now trades over-the-counter bulletin board stocks.

The exchange uses “smart order routing” technology to identify the best price for a transaction, whether inside or outside the exchange, according to a statement.

“We’ve successfully built a fully electronic exchange, centered on speed, transparency and fairness,” Jerry Putnam, Archipelago’s chief executive, said in the statement.

The electronic exchange now trades more than 8,000 equities, according to the statement.

Related Topics: Charles Schwab & Co.