Now he’s jumping to the other side of the Street. Last month Kim became the first full-time CEO of New York-based trading system BondBook, a joint venture of Merrill Lynch, Goldman Sachs and other top Wall Street firms. Kim vows to bring the equity market’s transparency and liquidity to the bond market. Running BondBook, however, may be even more challenging than running money. Other alternative trading systems have failed, and the Justice Department has recently launched an inquiry into potential collusion among the dealers that built BondBook. (Other online bond systems are also receiving Justice Department scrutiny.) Kim remains undaunted: “I found the transformational nature of this irresistible. It could actually change the structure of what I’ve been involved in for the past 18 years.”
