SECURITIES

Futures Convention Focuses on Barings: The collapse of Britain’s oldest investment bank has turned the futures industry’s annual convention into a forum on fraud prevention. Risky futures trading was at the center of the fiasco that brought down Barings last month. Since then, brokerage and exchange officials have sought to soothe investors’ anxieties about the international markets. Those same officials are seeking reassurance themselves at the Futures Industry Assn.’s four-day gathering in Boca Raton, Fla. “My sense is that Boca is going to be a very thorough post-mortem,” association President John Damgard said. Damgard and his staff reworked the convention’s agenda in the last week to focus attention on the Barings failure and its implications.