ELX Electronic Liquidity Exchange named three new members of its management team as the fledgling exchange moves toward a launch in the next three months.

The appointments mark the first hires for ELX, which plans to challenge CME Group Inc.'s (CME) dominance in interest rate futures, since Chief Executive Neal Wolkoff took the helm in October.

G. Kurt Von Uffel joined ELX as director of sales, having previously worked in interest rate and fixed income trading at Nomura Securities International.

ELX also hired Daniel McElduff as its director of compliance and Karen Ogulnick as director of project management.

McElduff was formerly executive director of commodities and futures compliance at Morgan Stanley (MS), while Ogulnick previously worked for the New York Mercantile Exchange, acquired last summer by CME.

In December, ELX filed for exchange status with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, after announcing that the Options Clearing Corp. will clear trades in its markets.

The electronic exchange, based in New York, will offer quarterly futures contracts on two- and five-year Treasurys, the 30-year bond, and other long-term Treasury notes.

There remains no official launch date for ELX, formed more than a year ago by a consortium of banks and technology companies seeking to provide a lower-cost alternative to interest rate trading at CME.

Founding members of ELX included Citigroup Inc. (C), Deutsche Bank AG (DB), Merrill Lynch & Co., Inc. and its acquirer, Bank of America Corp. (BAC), Barclays PLC's (BCS) unit, Barclays Capital, Credit Suisse Group (CS), BGC Partners Inc. (BGCP), Getco, JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM), Peak6, and Royal Bank of Scotland PLC (RBS).

Chicago hedge fund Citadel Investment Group was a founding member, but withdrew its seat on the board when it joined CME in developing a credit derivatives clearing platform. Citadel maintains its equity stake in ELX.

-By Jacob Bunge, Dow Jones Newswires; (312) 750 4117; jacob.bunge@dowjones.com

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