Reed agrees salary of just $1 to fill Grasso's job at NYSE

The New York Stock Exchange moved last night to restore its battered reputation by appointing John Reed, one of the great and the good of corporate America, as interim chairman and chief executive on a salary of just $1 (60p).

The previous incumbent, Dick Grasso, was forced to resign last week amid public outrage over the recent disclosure of his $140m remuneration package.

Mr Reed, the new man at the helm, is a former chairman of Citigroup. Mr Reed has agreed to do the job for a token $1, apparently out of a sense of public service after one of the worst months of damage to its reputation that the NYSE has ever suffered.

Mr Reed, 64, retired as chairman and co-chief executive of Citigroup in April 2000. He resigned his position at Citigroup after losing out in a power struggle for the top job to Sanford "Sandy" Weill.

The appointment was announced at a press conference yesterday hosted by Laurence Fink, head of an internal executive committee assembled only last Friday to find a successor capable of restoring credibility and respect to the exchange's tarnished image.

Mr Reed was not at the meeting, but in a conference call he said he was not going to be a permanent candidate for the position. He said he was calling from an island off France and would be at the exchange in about a week. He said he had only been to the exchange building in New York once in his career and had never met Mr Grasso, although he anticipated speaking to him soon.

Prior to the power struggle with Mr Weill, Mr Reed had been a Citibank "lifer", having joined America's largest bank in 1965. He said he would step down from the one board of directors of which he is a member, Altria Group, to avoid all possible conflicts of interest.

Top of the agenda when Mr Reed takes up his post will be whether to persist with the NYSE's present structure of mutual ownership, which many commentators have blamed for the poor standards of corporate governance and its inability to modernise.